The Kingdom of Carbonel

30

The Return of the Kings

John and Rosemary peered at the minute white cat.

‘Oh, Blandamour, I’m so thankful we’ve found you!’ whispered Rosemary.

The tiny creature rubbed against her outstretched forefinger, and purred with a sound no louder than the ticking of the smallest watch.

‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’ asked Mrs Cantrip defiantly. ‘Say to them Fallowhithe animals, “Here’s your Queen back again. I’m sorry she’s no bigger than a ginger biscuit?” Do you think they’ll believe you? Well you needn’t bother, I shouldn’t think it matters much by now. Not that I care two pennyworth of pentagons who wins, the Fallowhithe cats or the Broomhurst ones. And it’s no use asking for the counter-spell,’ she went on fiercely. ‘I’ve done enough obliging of you for one night and I’m doing no more. Three candle ends I’ve given you, and that’s generous.’

‘Perhaps Miss Dibdin would help us,’ suggested Rosemary.

‘Yes, where is she?’ asked John, looking at the unfinished meal on the table.

‘Where she won’t be no help to you!’ snapped Mrs Cantrip.

‘What have you done to her?’ asked John sharply.

‘She shouldn’t have been so aggravating,’ said the old woman sullenly. ‘Serves her right!’

‘Miss Dibdin, where are you?’ called Rosemary anxiously.

As if in answer a small round object rolled off the top shelf of the cupboard behind her and fell with a plop on to the floor. It was a nutmeg. They looked at the top shelf, and struggling to push its way between a bag of sugar and a packet of rice was a tiny, doll-like figure, in a neat tweed jacket and skirt.

‘Miss Dibdin!’ said John.

‘How could you?’ said Rosemary accusingly to Mrs Cantrip.

The old woman tossed her head, but she seemed anxious not to look Rosemary in the eye.

‘Well, I had to keep her out of mischief somehow,’ she said sullenly. ‘I couldn’t have her messing up my last crumb of magic with her silly ways.’

‘When did you do it?’ asked John.

‘It suddenly came over me in the middle of supper, so I blew a grain or two of Minuscule Magic on her just as she helped herself to pickles, and popped her in the cupboard in a potted meat jar to keep her safe. I can’t think how she got out. You can have her if you want to, she’s no use to me. And the cat, too, for that matter. The battle is over by now, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘The battle!’ said Rosemary. ‘I’d almost forgotten all about it.’

As if to remind them, there was a prolonged scuffle outside and far away a sharp cat call.

‘Come on, Rosie, let’s get back to headquarters. I’ll put Miss Dibdin in my pocket, and you take Blandamour.’

Very gently he picked up Miss Dibdin between his finger and thumb. She had been sitting in a dazed way on a pepper pot. He popped her back into the potted meat jar and put it in the top pocket of his blazer. Rosemary picked up the matchbox, and when the tiny cat had curled herself up inside, closed it softly. Together they hurried out into Fairfax Market. There they looked up anxiously at the roofs above them, expecting to see the struggling shapes that had swayed and fought there when they had made their way to Mrs Cantrip’s house. But there seemed nothing to be seen but deserted walls and roofs, and the sounds of battle sounded faint and far away. A solitary cat limped past them.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Rosemary. ‘Has the Fallowhithe army won?’

‘Won!’ said the cat bitterly. ‘It won’t be long now before the Broomhurst creatures are in full control. They have swept over half the town. Already this is enemy-held territory. There are pockets of our animals here and there, harrying where they get the chance, but our fellows are retreating to the other end of the town.’

‘Oh dear!’ said Rosemary.

‘Are the headquarters on the church tower still?’ asked John.

‘Bless you, no! The last time I saw Councillor Merbeck, he was defending Swimming Bath Slopes. He’d been joined by a company of fierce farm cats – terrible fighters they are. They call themselves Turley’s Terrors. But I can’t stop gossiping here. I’m carrying dispatches.’

‘Come on, Rosie, let’s make for the swimming bath. Follow me!’ said John. ‘I think I know the way.’

‘Good luck to you, hearing humans!’ the cat called after them.

They ran up Green Man Lane, down Pottery Court, across the High Street where the traffic lights winked busily to an empty road. Then, cutting down Ponsonby Street, they turned into Bath Road. At first they came across an occasional tussling pair of cats above them, and then groups and companies, until, when they reached the swimming baths, the roof was a solid mass of struggling animals. A haze of flying fur made it difficult to see what was happening.

‘How can we get up there?’ said Rosemary anxiously.

‘Quick, the garages at the end!’ said John.

They dashed to the back of the building where a row of garages in a cobbled yard were built against the end wall of the swimming baths. Outside one of the garages, a lorry was parked, loaded with something under a tarpaulin which rose to within a few feet of the garage roof. They clambered on to the bonnet of the lorry, and from there to the roof. They scrambled over the tarpaulin, slipping and sliding on its uneven surface.

‘Here, I’ll give you a leg up on to the roof !’ said John.

An urgent, eerie cat call rose over the hissing and spitting just above them. Rosemary’s courage wavered for a moment, but she gritted her teeth and climbed on to John’s bowed back. From there she could easily reach the garage roof. She pulled herself up, the soft grass of Cat Country saving her from grazed knees and torn hands. Then, lying on her stomach, she stretched down to help John up after her.

They were on a narrow ledge with a high bank sloping steeply in front of them. Cautiously they scrambled up till they could see over the top. The bank of clouds that had lain on the horizon in a tumbled heap earlier in the evening had mounted and grown, until only here and there a gap showed serenely shining stars. It had become oppressively hot, and the spit and hiss of fighting cats was lost from time to time in the grumble of distant thunder. Dimly they could see below them a drop of several feet. Then the ground sloped gently away, but whether the surface was of grass or rock they could not see, for the whole surface heaved and tossed like a stormy sea, a sea not of waves but of fighting cats, and the air was full of strange, throaty cat taunts.

Suddenly, there was a very loud rumble of thunder followed by a flash of lightning. For one flickering second the whole scene was lit up, and just below them with his back against the little cliff was an old, old cat with a very small black animal beside him. Together they were warding off a huge, grinning sandy tom.

‘Merbeck!’ called John. ‘Calidor! It’s us, John and Rosemary.’

‘Greetings!’ panted Merbeck. ‘We can’t hold out much longer. This is our last stand!’

A second shape took its place beside Merbeck just as the sandy cat made a vicious lunge at Calidor, and another flash of lightning showed Tudge laying about him like a windmill, and the sandy cat slinking away.

‘To me, Turleys!’ he called. ‘Us’ll go down fighting!’ From the mass of shifting shapes, here and there one would shake itself clear and force its way to where Tudge and Merbeck and little Calidor stood with their backs against the cliff.

John was banging the palm of one hand with his other fist. ‘Go it! Oh, go it, Tudge and Merbeck!’

‘And go it me, too!’ came in an excited squeak from Calidor.

So absorbed was John that he did not notice Rosemary tugging at his jacket and calling him anxiously.

‘John, John, you must listen!’

‘What’s the matter?’ he said impatiently.

‘Some more cats, a whole company of them, coming towards us along the ridge. I saw them in that last flash of lightning!’

‘More cats?’ said John grimly. ‘Then I should think that just about finishes it. Merbeck!’ he called through his curved hands. ‘There’s another company moving up behind you!’

‘This… is… the… end!’ panted the Councillor.

In the added gloom that seemed to follow each flash, Rosemary saw that the dark shape of the approaching animals was nearly upon them.

‘They’re here, Merbeck!’ she called desperately. ‘I can see them!’

Merbeck gave a gallant, despairing cry of, ‘Who goes there?’

The answer came back clear and strong, ‘I, Carbonel!’ And in a double flash of lightning they saw him standing on the high bank. His magnificent head was raised inquiringly, while behind stood a splendid company of animals. For a second they were lit up so clearly that John and Rosemary saw behind him a lean, blue-eyed cat from Siam, a thin, big-boned cat from Egypt, a long-haired Persian cat, cats black as coal, white as milk and grey as woodsmoke.

The lightning was gone, and with it the sight of the returning kings. But already the battle had begun to waver, and the whisper went around, ‘Carbonel! Carbonel is back! The kings are home again!’ And as the fighting gradually faltered and came to a standstill, the shifting mass was jewelled with pairs of glowing eyes, as one by one more and more of the battle-scarred animals turned and looked up to where the kings stood on the bank above them.

‘What is this unseemly brawling?’ asked Carbonel, and although he did not seem to raise his voice, it cut through the shuffle and murmur of the animals below so that the farthest cat on the Swimming Bath Slopes heard every syllable.

‘Is this the way you greet your king? It seems that much has happened since I went away, and there is much for me to learn.’

There was a crash of thunder and another lightning flash which showed the sea of upturned cat faces below them, and as the thunder rumbled into silence, Rosemary felt a large wet raindrop fall on the hand still holding the matchbox.

‘Tomorrow I will hear all about this night’s work, and justice shall be done. Until then, home with you where you belong!’

There was a shuffle and a murmur in the darkness below them.

‘We go, O Carbonel!’ came the answer.

The lamps of a hundred gleaming eyes seemed to go out one by one, as the shamed animals turned away. There was a sighing, rustling noise as they surged past John and Rosemary and streamed away in the darkness. One final lightning flash showed Rosemary a curious sight. A wave of animals reached the edge of what in daylight was the garage roof, and with one movement, like a drift of snow when the thaw sets in, the dark mass slid to the ground, then broke up and disappeared.

The thundery rain was falling in slow heavy drops by now, and the deep blueness of the night began to change to the thin grey that comes before the dawn. Dimly John and Rosemary could see the dark mass of Carbonel and the kings.

A deep voice said, ‘We must be on our way, brothers, we have far to travel.’

‘This night’s work makes us the more anxious to return to see what awaits us.’

Somebody laughed.

‘Go on your way, my friends!’ said Carbonel. ‘And may your homecoming be more peaceable than mine!’

Against the sky, the two children saw them go, a splendid procession of cats of every kind and colour. One thing they disagreed about afterwards. Rosemary was quite sure that on every head there was a small, shining crown, but John said she imagined it. When they turned back and looked where Carbonel sat alone, he certainly wore no crown. The curves and broken lines of Cat Country seemed to waver and straighten as though they had been redrawn with a ruler. Then they realized they were no longer standing on grass but upon the wet tiles of the garage roof, with their elbows on the coping of the roof of Fallowhithe Swimming Baths.

‘Father!’ called Calidor. ‘I pushed a great, grownup tabby right out of Cat Country, honest I did. But I don’t like getting my paws wet,’ he added plaintively.

The rain was pouring down now. ‘Let’s go and shelter in the bicycle shed!’ said John.

John and Rosemary sat on the rack which in the daytime held the bicycles, and Carbonel perched himself on the saddle of a machine that for some reason someone had forgotten to collect. Calidor strutted around, still full of excitement over his part in the fight, and singing a rather conceited little song. They were joined by Woppit, who had an indignant Pergamond beside her. The old cat had refused to let her join in, and together they had watched from the safety of a distant chimney pot. Merbeck was there, too. He had to be supported by Tudge because he was so exhausted.

The rain drummed on the tin roof above them, but nobody noticed it. Carbonel listened in silence to the long story. His golden eyes moved from one to another as they took up the tale in turn. When the threat to Blandamour and the kittens was told, his ears flattened and his tail lashed angrily. But when Rosemary opened the matchbox on the palm of her hand and the minute white cat stepped delicately out, he did not know whether to growl in fury or purr with pleasure that Blandamour was at least safe. In the end he did neither, and his tiny wife stretched up and licked his nose with a tongue which was no larger than the petal of a scarlet pimpernel, but was none the less loving for that. Carbonel’s eyes were troubled. Even Miss Dibdin, whom John had put down on the paving stones beside him, still inside the potted meat jar in case someone should tread on her, seemed to fill the Cat King with grave concern.

‘There is much to think about in your story,’ said Carbonel. ‘Two things only are clear; first that my family and the cats of my kingdom can never pay the debt we owe to John and Rosemary.’

Rosemary blushed a rosy red and John made embarrassed noises in his throat.

‘Secondly,’ went on Carbonel, ‘Mrs Cantrip must be curbed and the magic undone once and for all. But it has been a long night for all of us. Tomorrow we will meet again.’

‘In the Green Cave after breakfast?’ suggested John. Carbonel nodded.

‘And until then I leave my dear Blandamour in your charge.’

‘I’ve thought of the very place!’ said Rosemary. ‘My old doll’s house, and Miss Dibdin can keep her company!’