Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac

holidays.
    ‘You’re
awfully thin,’ said his mother, giving him a kiss.
    ‘I’m
all right really,’ said Cedric, carefully leaning his cello against the wall of
their little private sitting-room.
    ‘And
haven’t you grown!’ Lady Collingford exclaimed.
    ‘So has
his hair,’ murmured Lord Collingford.
    ‘But
they all wear it like that nowadays,’ said Lady Collingford.
    The
door opened and the housekeeper bustled in. She beamed when she saw Cedric.
    ‘Hello
Cedric. It’s good to have you home again,’ she said.
    ‘Hello
Mrs Gowdie,’ said Cedric with a friendly smile.
    ‘Hasn’t
he grown?’ she said to Lady Collingford. ‘Thin though.’ She turned back to
Cedric. ‘I expect you’d like something to eat.’
    ‘Er...
I’ll go and unpack first,’ said Cedric.
    ‘Shall
I help?’ asked his mother.
    ‘Oh, no
thanks,’ replied Cedric very quickly, ‘I shan’t be long.’
    Mrs
Gowdie gave him a key. ‘I always lock the bedroom when the season starts,’ she
said. ‘With so many strangers wandering around the house and going where
they’re not supposed to.’
    She
would have been very surprised if she had known that she’d locked such a dirty
old stranger in Cedric’s bedroom. Catweazle, with the aid of Adamcos, had
managed to track down Touchwood’s hiding place by now, and was busy reciting
suitable spells, hoping that one of them would manage to unlock the door for
him.
    He was
in the middle of the eighth of his incantations when his thumbs pricked. This
was a warning of approaching danger and he just managed to scramble under the
bed before Cedric unlocked the door and came in carrying his suitcase.
    Catweazle
watched from under the bed as the strange boy began to unpack. He was very
surprised when, after a quick look into the passage, Cedric locked the door on
the inside and slowly turned one of the pillars of the fourposter. A section of
the oak panelling at the other side of the room slid back and Cedric climbed
into the opening and disappeared from sight.
    Catweazle
was extremely taken aback. He struggled out from under the bed, sneezed,
twiddled his beard and looked at the hole in the wall. What magic was this?
Where had the boy gone? He began to make an anxious fizzing noise as he
examined the opening. It was a sure sign that he was getting excited.

    ‘Gab
gaba agaba,’ he muttered nervously. Then he blew on the ring he wore on his
thumb, just in case there were any evil spirits about, and climbed into the
darkness.
    Stone
steps led the old magician downwards until he began to wonder if they would
ever end. It grew steadily colder and presently a mushroomy sort of smell came
up from the darkness. It reminded him of his dungeon in Farthing Castle. Even
the steps began to look the same.
    But
when he reached the bottom and came face to face with the very door of his
former prison, he sank to his knees, convinced that somehow he had slipped back
through the centuries and was once more in the clutches of the Normans.
    There
was a light inside the dungeon and the door was ajar. Catweazle peered in. His
old cell was barely recognizable. Magical symbols covered the walls. The rough
flagstones had been replaced with smooth black tiles and an elaborate magic
circle had been painted on them, surrounded by the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
There were four grim-looking iron candlesticks round the circle and the boy was
busily lighting them with little magic fire-sticks.
    Catweazle
craned his neck round the door, overbalanced and staggered forward on to his
knees. Cedric backed away. It was difficult to tell who was the more
frightened.
    ‘Mercy!’
stammered Catweazle. ‘Harm me not!’ He took a piece of chalk from his robe and
drew a protective circle around himself. ‘Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas,’ he
intoned fearfully.
    Cedric
stared at the bedraggled apparition and finally managed to speak. ‘How... how...
did you get down here? Who are you?’
    ‘Enchant
me not,’ pleaded Catweazle, crossing his fingers, ‘Touchwood was lost.’
    ‘Who?’
said Cedric, still very alarmed.
    ‘Touchwood,’
repeated Catweazle, extremely anxious to please the young sorcerer. ‘My
familiar,’ he explained, as he took the toad from his robe. ‘Hast thou no
familiar?’
    ‘I
don’t think so,’ said Cedric, looking in bewilderment at Touchwood, who croaked
a rather wary greeting. ‘Have you found another way in from outside?’
    Catweazle,
relieved to find the young sorcerer was