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

Sure enough, Chrestomanci said, "Cat, I'm sure I can trust you to show Tonino the ropes here and keep an eye on him until he finds his feet in England."

Cat sighed. He knew he was going to be very bored.

But it was worse than that. The other children in the castle thought Tonino was lovely. They all did their best to be friends with him. Chrestomanci's daughter, Julia, patiently taught Tonino all the games you played in England, including cricket. Chrestomanci's son, Roger, joined in the cricket lessons and then spent hours gravely comparing spells with Tonino. Chrestomanci's ward, Janet, spent further hours enthusiastically asking Tonino about Italy. Janet came from another world where Italy was quite different, and she was interested in the differences.

And yet, despite all this attention, Tonino went around with a lost, lonely look that made Cat avoid him. He could tell Tonino was acutely homesick. In fact, Cat was fairly sure Tonino was feeling just the way Cat had felt himself when he first came to Chrestomanci Castle, and Cat could not get over the annoyance of having someone have feelings that were his. He knew this was stupidЧthis was partly why he was not happy with himselfЧbut he was not happy with Julia, Roger, and Janet either. He considered that they were making a stupid fuss over Tonino. The fact was that Julia and Roger normally looked after Cat. He had grown used to being the youngest and unhappiest person in the castle until Tonino had come along and stolen his thunder. Cat knew all this perfectly well, but it did not make the slightest difference to the way he felt.

To make things worse, Chrestomanci himself was extremely interested in Tonino's magic. He spent large parts of the next few days with Tonino doing experiments to discover just what the extent of Tonino's powers was, while Cat, who was used to being the one with the interesting magic, was left to wrestle with problems of magic theory by himself in Chrestomanci's study.

"Tonino," Chrestomanci said, by way of explanation, "can, it seems, not only reinforce other people's spells but also make use of any magic other people do. If it's true, it's a highly unusual ability. And by the way," he added, turning around in the doorway, looking tall enough to brush the ceiling, "you don't seem to have shown Tonino around the castle yet. How come?"

"I was busyЧI forgot," Cat muttered sulkily.

"Fit it into your crowded schedule soon, please," Chrestomanci said, "or I may find myself becoming seriously irritated."

Cat sighed but nodded. No one disobeyed Chrestomanci when he got like this. But now he had to face the fact that Chrestomanci knew exactly how Cat was feeling and had absolutely no patience with it. Cat sighed again as he got down to his problems.

Magic Theory left him completely bewildered. His trouble was that he could, instinctively, do magic that used very advanced Magic Theory indeed, and he had no idea how he did it. Sometimes he did not even know he was doing magic. Chrestomanci said Cat must learn theory or he might one day do something quite terrible by mistake. As far as Cat was concerned, the one thing he wanted magic to do was to solve theory problems, and that seemed to be the one thing you couldn't use it for.

He got six answers he knew were nonsense. Then, feeling very neglected and put-upon, he took Tonino on a tour of the castle. It was not a success. Tonino looked white and tired and timid almost the whole time and shivered in the long, cold passages and on all the dark, chilly staircases. Cat could not think of anything to say except utterly obvious things like "This is called the small drawing room" or "This is the schoolroom, we have lessons here with Michael Saunders, but he's away in Greenland just now" or "Here's the front hall, it's made of marble."

The only time Tonino showed the slightest interest was when they came to the big windows that overlooked the velvety green lawn and the great cedars of the gardens. He actually hooked a knee on the windowsill to look down at it. "My mother has told me of this," he said, "but I never thought it would be so wet and green."

"How does your mother know about the gardens?" Cat asked.

"She is English. She was brought up here in this castle when Gabriel de Witt, who was Chrestomanci before this one, collected many children with magic talents to be trained here," Tonino replied.

Cat felt annoyed and somehow cheated that Tonino had a connection with the castle anyway. "Then you're English, too," he said. It came out as if he were accusing Tonino of a crime.

"No, I am Italian," Tonino said firmly. He added, with great pride, "I belong to the foremost spell house in Italy."

There did not seem to be any reply to this. Cat did think of saying, "And I'm going to be the next ChrestomanciЧI've got nine lives, you know," but he knew this would be silly and boastful. Tonino had not been boasting really. He had been trying to say why he did not belong in the castle. So Cat simply took Tonino back to the playroom, where Julia was only too ready to teach him card games, and mooched away, feeling he had done his duty. He tried to avoid Tonino after that. He did not like being made to feel the way Tonino made him feel.

Unfortunately, Julia went down with measles the next day, and Roger the day after that. Cat had had measles long before he came to the castle, and so had Tonino. Janet could not remember whether she had had them or not, although she assured them that there was measles in the world she came from, because you could be injected against it. "Maybe I've been injected," she suggested hopefully.

Chrestomanci's wife, Millie, gave Janet a worried look. "I think you'd better stay away from Roger and Julia all the same," she said.

"But you're an enchantress," Janet said. "You could stop me getting them."

"Magic has almost no effect on measles," Millie told her. "I wish it did, but it doesn't. Cat can see Roger and Julia if he wants, but you keep away."

Cat went to Roger's bedroom and then Julia's and was shocked at how ill they both were. He could see it was going to be weeks before they were well enough to look after Tonino. He found himself, quite urgently and cold-bloodedly (and in spite of what Millie had said) putting a spell on Janet to make sure she did not go down with measles, too. He knew as he did it that it was probably the most selfish thing he had ever done, but he simply could not bear to be the only one left to look after Tonino. By the time he got back to the schoolroom, he was in a very bad mood.

"How are they?" Janet asked him anxiously.

"Awful," Cat said out of his bad mood. "Roger's sort of purple and Julia's uglier than ever."

"Do you think Julia's ugly then?" Janet said. "I mean, in the normal way."