"Jones, Diana Wynne - Mixed Magics" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

"Yes, yes, yes," Miss Rosalie said, so obviously humoring him that Gabriel began rolling about in distress, spilling bedclothes on to the floor. "Of course I'll warn them," Miss Rosalie said, hauling blankets back. "Settle down, Gabriel, before you make yourself ill, and we'll do everything you want." She made meaningful faces at Mr. Roberts to take Cat and Tonino out of the room.

Mr. Roberts nodded. He put a hand on each boy's shoulder and steered them out onto the landing. Behind them, as he gently shut the door, they heard Gabriel say, "Listen, Rosalie, my mind is not wandering! Spiderman has learned to travel in time. He's dangerous. I mean what I say."

Gabriel de Witt sounded so weak and so upset that Mr. Roberts said, looking extremely worried, "Look, I think you boys had better go home now. I don't think he'll be well enough to talk to you again today. I'll call you a cab and telephone the castle to say you'll be back on an earlier train."

There was nothing Cat wanted more by this time. Tonino, from the look of him, felt the same. The only thing Cat regretted was that they were going to miss lunch. Still, Miss Rosalie's idea of lunch was usually a tomato and some lettuce, and they did have Millie's five shillings. He followed Mr. Roberts downstairs, thinking of doughnuts and station pies.

Luckily there was a cab just clopping along the road as they reached the front gate. It was one of those old-fashioned horse-drawn hackneys, like a big upright box on wheels, with the driver sitting up on top of the box. It was shabby and the horse was scrawny, but Mr. Roberts hailed it with strong relief and paid the driver for them as the boys climbed in. "You can just catch the twelve-thirty," he said. "Hurry it along, driver."

He shut the door and the cab set off. It was smelly and jolting, and its wheels squeaked, but Cat felt it was worth it just to get away so soon. It was not far to the station. Cat sat back in the half dark inside the box and felt his mind go empty with relief. He did not want to think of Gabriel de Witt again for a very long time. He thought about station pies and corned beef sandwiches instead.

But half an hour of jolting, smelling, and squeaking later, something began puzzling him. He turned to the other boy in the dimness beside him. "Where were we going?"

ToninoЧif that was his name; Cat found he was not at all sureЧshook his head uncertainly. "We are traveling northeast," he said. "I feel sick."

"Keep swallowing then," Cat told him. One thing he seemed to be sure of was that he was supposed to look after this boy, whoever he was. "It can't be that far now," he said soothingly. Then he wondered what, or where, was "not far." He was a little puzzled to find he had no idea.

At least he seemed to be right about its not being far. Five minutes later, just as the other boy's swallowing was getting quite desperate, the cab squealed to a stop with a great yell of "Whoa there!" from the driver up above, and the door beside Cat was pulled open. Cat blinked out into gray light upon a dirty pavement and a row of old, old houses as far as he could see in both directions. We must be in the outskirts of London, he thought. While Cat puzzled about this, the driver said, "Two blondie lads, just like you said, governor."

The person who had opened the door leaned around it to peer in at them. They found themselves face-to-face with a smallish elderly man in a dirty black gown. The peering round brown eyes and the brown whiskery face, full of lines and wrinkles, were so like a monkey's that it was only the soft black priestly sort of hat on the man's head that showed he was a man and not a monkey. Or probably not. Cat found, in some strange way, that he was not sure of anything.
The monkey's flat mouth spread in a grin. "Ah, yes, the right two," the man said, "as ordered." He had a dry, snapping voice, which snapped out, "Out you get then. Make haste now."

While Cat and Tonino obediently scrambled out to find themselves in a long street of the old tumbledown housesЧall slightly different, like cottages built for a townЧthe man in the black gown handed up a gold coin to the driver. "Charmed to take you back," he muttered. It was hard to tell if he was speaking to himself or to the driver, but the driver touched his hat to him anyway with great respect, cracked his whip, and drove away, squealing and clattering. The cab seemed to move away from them up the tumbledown street in jerks, and each jerk seemed to make it harder to see. Before it quite reached the end of the street, it had jerked out of sight entirely.

They stared after it. "Why did that happen?" Tonino asked.

"Belongs to the future, doesn't it?" the monkeylike man snapped. Again he might have been talking to himself. But he seemed to notice them then. "Come along now. No stupid questions. It's not every day I hire two apprentices from the poorhouse, and I want you indoors earning your keep. Come along."

He turned and hurried into the house beside them. They followed, quite bewildered, past an unpainted front doorЧwhich closed with a slam behind themЧinto a dark, wooden hallway. Beyond this was a big room that was much lighter because of a row of filthy windows looking out onto bushes. As the monkey-man hurried them on through it, Cat recognized the place as a magician's workshop. It breathed out the smell of magic and of dragon's blood, and there were symbols chalked over most of the floor. Cat had a tantalizing feeling that he should have known what most of those symbols were supposed to do, and that they were not quite in any order he was used to, but when he thought about this, the symbols meant nothing to him.

The main thing he noticed was the row of star charts along one wall. There were eight of them, getting newer and newer from the old, brown one at the far left, to the one on the right, after a gap where a ninth chart had been torn down, which was white and freshly drawn.

"Gave up on that one. Too well protected," the monkey-man remarked as Cat looked at the gap. Again he was probably talking to himself, for he swung around at once and opened a door at the end of the room. "Come along, come along," he snapped, and hurried on a down a sideways flight of stone steps into the cold stone basement under the house. Cat, as he hurried after, only had time to think that the last chart, after the torn-down one, had looked uncomfortably familiar in some way, before the monkey-man swung around on both of them at the bottom of the steps. "Now then," he said, "what are your names?"

It seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to ask, but they stood shivering on the chilly flagstones, staring from him to one another. Neither of them had the least idea.

The man sighed at their stupidity. "Too much of the forgettery," he muttered in that way that seemed to be talking to himself. He pointed to Cat. "All right," he said to Tonino. "What's his name?"

"ErЧ" said Tonino, "it means something. In Latin, I think. Felix, or something like that. Yes, Felix."

"And," the man said to Cat, "his name is?"

"Tony," said Cat. This did not strike him as quite right, any more than Felix did, but he did not seem to be able to get any closer than that. "His name's Tony."

"Not Eric?" snapped the man. "Which of you is Eric?"

They both shook their heads, although Cat had a faint, fleeting idea that the name meant a protected kind of heather. That was such an idiotic idea that he gave it up at once.

"Very well," snapped the man. "Tony and Felix, you are now my apprentices. This room here is where you will eat and sleep. You will find mattresses over there." He pointed a brown, hairy hand at a dim corner. "In that other corner there are brooms and dustpan. I require you to sweep this room and make it as clean and tidy as you can. When that is done, you may lay out the mattresses."