Cats of Seroster

by Robert Westall

Genres: YA Fantasy; YA Historical Fantasy; YA Wizards & Witches

Synopsis

Cam is quick-witted and clever - sometimes too clever for his own good. When he finds himself in a spot of trouble, he's keen to take a job that will get him out of the way for a while, even if it means he doesn't look at it too closely.

Tasked to take a letter to a far-off city - simple enough, you would think - he instead finds himself caught up in intrigue and dangers beyond those he was escaping, and in possession of a cursed knife he cannot get rid of. And that's before he even looks at the city's cats.

The city's very unusual, unexpectedly intelligent cats.

The city's unusual, intelligent and slightly magical cats, whose fates are now entwined with his.

Release date: January 1, 1984

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

It was night in the Palace.

The boy was eating with his father the Duke. It wasn’t cheerful. The black stone walls were hung with tapestries that swayed in the draughts, so that the woven figures seemed alive as the boy watched them out of the corner of his eye. They had cruel stupid faces, twisted noses, piggy eyes and jaws like wolves.

When the boy was happy, he could see the faces weren’t really cruel. The weaver had just been a rotten artist. But tonight they looked diabolical. So much killing and dying. The boar twisting under the hunter’s spear, shedding drops of blood as big as pears. The slain warrior, forever falling, grimacing. Even the tiny peasants who filled the corners glanced over their shoulders from their ploughing with sly hating looks.

The boy sat at the bottom of the table, far away from his father. Father didn’t talk much these days; brought great leather books to meals and pored over them, mumbling about money, money, always money. Eating so clumsily that the boy watched stain after stain spattering his once-fine robe.

The boy would rather have eaten anywhere else. In the guardroom, where the soldiers told increasingly filthy stories, shouting betweentimes that they were not fit for royal ears. In the kitchens, where there was always a cold chicken-leg and a turnspit-stool by the enormous fire. Even with the ageing ladies-in-waiting who would now wait for ever, talking incessantly of the good old days when the Duchess was alive, and making incessant stealthy trips to the wine-bottles on the side-tables. Until, in the end, they would clutch the boy’s head to their ample or skinny bosoms (so he could smell stale clothing and winey breath) and call him ‘poor child’.

But now he was twelve, he must eat in state, fumbling with knobbly gold knives and spoons that seemed made for giants. Besides, all the good warm friendly places in the Palace had gone cold recently. When he entered the guardroom, the soldiers fell silent. The cooks still gave him chicken-legs, but they gave him odd unreadable glances as well. When a lady-in-waiting called him ‘poor child’ now, the others silenced her with slight shakes of the head. And the people he met in corridors bobbed abruptly and hurried past.

Just like when Mother was dying.

Everything cried out danger. Dukes should sense danger before other men; that’s how Dukes survived. But Father, at the far end of the table, slurped and mumbled on, sensing no danger at all …

There were two other living creatures in the room. The royal bouteiller carving the joint, and Sehtek, the royal cat. Sehtek, friendlier than any human. When he felt rotten, he would bury his face in her fur. She smelt of dust and clean washing and deep inside, like the sea far off, he could hear her purr. She was golden, with golden eyes, and far too big to pick up.

She looked bigger than ever tonight, sitting by the fire. Hunched, fur all standing up on end with the firelight glowing through it. He could tell she wasn’t purring, just by looking at her. She’d sat thus, the night his mother died. It always meant something terrible; it made the boy’s stomach curl up, so he could hardly eat. What danger was coming? Was it coming across the red plain below the city walls? Already inside the city, in the alleys between the tall stone houses? In the Palace itself? So much whispering …

He listened; heard nothing. The black walls were too thick. Far, far away, his father muttered, and crossed out a whole line in the leather ledger. The bouteiller went on carving meat.

Then the bouteiller stretched both arms above his head, as if his shoulders ached, both hands clenched around the long carving knife. The boy pursed his lips at such ill-manners, but the Duke did not notice.

Then the bouteiller’s arms descended, plunging the carving knife, still dripping fat, deep into the Duke’s neck.

The Duke fell forward without a word. Only knocking over a goblet that rolled down the table, spilling wine, and fell with a clang on the floor.

The bouteiller pulled out the knife with a sucking noise, and walked down the table towards the boy.

The boy couldn’t move; just sat.

But Sehtek moved; streaked like flowing gold between the bouteiller’s legs, so he crashed full-length and his knife went skittering away across the floor-slabs. The boy leapt up and away round the table. The bouteiller got up slowly, retrieved his knife and came after him again.

The boy’s legs stopped working. He stared at the bloody, greasy knife hanging above him and shut his eyes, waiting for pain to thrust down into his heart.

Instead, the bouteiller screamed.

The boy opened his eyes. Why was the bouteiller wearing a great fur hat, with straps down over his eyes?

Then the hat moved, and fine red lines drew themselves across the bouteiller’s cheeks. The hat was Sehtek, ears flat against her skull, golden eyes glaring wild.

Blindly, the bouteiller lunged upwards with his knife. Now there was blood on the golden fur too.

At last, the boy could move. His father’s death was unreal, a nightmare; his own death too. But Sehtek’s hurt was real. He grabbed the first thing his hand found on the table and jabbed with all his strength; a two-pronged carving fork. He didn’t expect it to go through the bouteiller’s leather, but it did. The bouteiller squealed, pulled away and reeled down the table, knocking over chair after chair, Sehtek still riding his head. Then he fell again, with a massive splintering of wood.

Sehtek sniffed the bouteiller’s face carefully. When she walked away, the boy knew the man was dead.

His father dead; the bouteiller dead; it was all too queer to bear. He looked at his own hands; sticky red gloves holding the two-tined carving-fork …

Hammering on the door; shouting. The bouteiller must have bolted it beforehand, so he wouldn’t be disturbed. The boy tottered across to unbolt it and let them in …

Then Sehtek called, warningly. And he realised the voices outside were shouting the wrong sort of thing. They weren’t asking if the Duke was all right. They were asking the bouteiller if he was all right, and if the job was done. They weren’t nice voices.

Somebody shouted for an axe to break down the door. An axe was brought. The tip of its blade appeared through the door-panel with the first booming stroke.

Sehtek called again, urgently; standing by the open window, urging him to come. He ran to her, and looked down. The Palace was built on the edge of a cliff; below a narrow ledge was a sheer drop into the dark.

Sehtek jumped out on to that narrow ledge, urging him to follow. But even with the axe behind, he didn’t dare.

She leapt back on to the windowsill, and stared at him. The pupils of her eyes got bigger and bigger, till they filled the whole world. Then she took his mind and he was no longer a boy, but her kitten.

He looked back into the room, and saw it with kitten-eyes, Sehtek’s eyes. Everything was grey, except those things that were red. The rivulet of blood, winding down the table from the dead Duke, making islands of the golden dishes. The spreading stain where the bouteiller lay. The pear-shapes of blood on the tapestry, around the dying boar. Red, red, red. Redder than red. And the smell of blood and roasted meat were a quivering excitement. And the tapestries moving in the draughts were a wild enchantment. And the shining axe-tip, appearing and disappearing through the door … and the white chips of wood, bouncing and rolling … catch … pounce.

But Sehtek called again, and this time he followed her. The ledge seemed wider now, and the drop into the dark nothing. He leapt. And since he was small and nimble, landed safely. And he followed Sehtek along the catwalks. Along the tops of walls they went; down vines and trellises, clinging to the sides of houses. Through drains and over the moon-dreaming rooftops, among the very spires. Sehtek had so taken his mind that the catwalk seemed the only sensible road. And the streets below were lamplit canyons, where alien giants walked upright. Like any cat, he had no fear of falling.

Back at the Palace, the door collapsed. The bouteiller’s friends burst in. They looked nervously at the Duke, but he didn’t leap up and curse them. The rest of the room seemed empty. They called the bouteiller’s name, while the candles flickered. Then they found him, a splintered gilded chair-leg jutting upwards through his back. They turned him over, and saw what Sehtek had done to his face. At last one said, “The cats knew …”

And even they crossed themselves. Even Little Paul, their leader …

For the cats of that city were an old legend.

No man could have noticed Sehtek, as she led the boy to the Mausoleum in the depths of the city. She went softer than black velvet falling in darkness; softer than cobwebs blowing in the night-wind. She could have hidden in a goblet of shadow.

But the whole city, unwitting, felt the vibrations of her rage and shock. Men by their firesides crossed and recrossed their legs, stretched and yawned and rubbed their shoulders, unable to get comfortable. Then went to fetch a drink. Their wives snapped at them for leaving the door open. But when they’d fetched wine, they left it at their elbows, undrunk. Wives fussed with fires already burning comfortably, blackening them with unneeded coals; picked up embroideries and threw them down again, complaining that the rushlight strained their eyes. Happily-married couples quarrelled suddenly, about nothing. Apologised, saying that the wind was in the wrong quarter. Then quarrelled again.

The ordinary cats prowled the rooms, miaowing to be let out, and immediately miaowing to be let back in; clawed the draperies and got thrown out for good. Outside, they wandered in black, back-twitching misery; not even knowing what was wrong. Meeting on rooftops they bickered so hideously that people flung open windows and drenched them with water.

Only a few, the brightest, were drawn to the Mausoleum.

But the Miw knew what was wrong. Nobody ever mistook a Miw for an ordinary cat. They were twice the size. Just to stroke a Miw (and they weren’t averse to being stroked) was to know the difference. Their bones were brutally heavy, and their muscles thick as cream. When they chose to sit on people’s knees, people were glad when they got off again. Too heavy for comfortable breathing; they lay heavy on the soul too; men felt less the masters of their own fate.

All Miw were golden. Even the black Miw, the Matagots whose constant fight against the dark powers had stained them black from ear to tail, were gold beneath their black guard-hairs. Miw were forbidden to mate with other cats. Mating with Wildcats in the Former Days had produced the tabbies, blacks and greys – the Weaker Brethren who took so much looking after.

Miw never foraged for rotten fishskin in the middens. They sat on men’s tables, eating the choicest morsels offered. They belonged to no household, came and went as they chose. But they were welcome, even if they left the best cushions thick with golden hair. A bracelet of plaited Miw-hair brought good luck and easy childbirth. A contented Miw kept the whole house happy. Wives became sweet-tongued and quick to bed. Children were thoroughly washed, but never beaten … Besides, Miw were courteous – never clawed hangings or fouled the rushes or outstayed their welcome.

The moment Sehtek began to transmit her rage, every Miw knew who was sending. Where she was; where she was going. They were summoned; none thought of disobeying. For she would not stop that nerve-twitching agony until every living Miw was with her.

Mostly, they just went to the door, and courteously asked to be out. Some, alas, were caught in empty rooms. One leapt to the top of the bed-hangings and clawed his way out through the ceiling. Others climbed the intricate warrens of chimneys, sending down sooty swarms of squawking starlings that terrified families sitting at supper. Two ascended chimneys in which fires were actually burning. One died, halfway up; his massive bones were brought down by the chimney sweep’s brush the following spring. Others leapt through windows of horn, oiled parchment and glass, ignoring their cuts and bruises. One she-Miw, spreading her plumed legs and tail, fell seventy feet to the rocky slope below the city wall. Then got back into the city up a stinking privy-outlet, terrifying the straining man squatting on the privy. She was not the last to arrive. Later, mere men swore that all these happenings were portents of the death of the Duke.

None knew why Sehtek was summoning; there was just the feeling of a golden thunderstorm with claws for lightning. And the endless repetition of the lament from the Former Days.

“You have lain too long by the winter fires,

You have basked too long in the arms of the sun.”

Amon met his half-brother Smerdis, as they crossed the grass-grown top of a triumphal arch that spanned the street. They touched noses, but didn’t sniff backsides. Smerdis was two years heavier and more solemn than Amon.

“Again?” sent Amon, as another burst of Sehtek-rage hit them. He was afraid his back-muscles might twitch, and his brother notice.

“Goddess in-her,” sent Smerdis, reprovingly

“She-goddess, goddess, all this cold weather!”

“Miw not-listen her. Miw turn-backs. Now, great-evil.” Smerdis’s sending-images were as small and neat as ever, but nearly overwhelmed by the Sehtek-storm.

They trotted in single file along a sagging lead gutter, and looked in through a shattered window of the Mausoleum.

It was the funeral-place of the Dukes. Built by a grateful people, regardless of expense. An architect had come from Italy; built a thick-walled octagon with vast copper dome, and doors twelve feet high, to admit the black-and-gold hearse with its plumed horses and black-and-gold footmen balanced precariously on top.

Inside, black marble columns stretched from floor to ceiling. The black marble coffins were stacked six-high, each telling, in fine Roman lettering, its Duke’s ferocity in war, magnanimity in peace, loving fatherhood, mercy on orphans, thirst for justice … Each coffin sang the praises of its occupant more fully than the last. The lettering got smaller and smaller, to the point of illegibility.

The domed ceiling was painted with the puffy white clouds and pink cherubs of Heaven. The floor was tiled with great glowing patterns by a dark man from Muslim lands. The Mausoleum was thrown open every day to the people, so they could pay their respects, and see what they paid their taxes for.

Few came. It was dark inside, and nobody could read Latin. Eventually, when the last coffin-shelf was filled, the custodians got tired of the sound of dust gathering; one could make more money selling cloth in the market … The bronze doors were fastened with an iron chain and padlock. The padlock rusted. When some city historian finally wanted it opened, the key would not turn. No man had been inside since.

Such pomp, wealth and death gathered in one place grew oppressive. Nobody wanted to live next door. The houses on each side fell vacant; vacancy spread like dry rot. The whole street fell empty. Small boys dared each other to run along it after dark. To prove they’d done so, they scribbled on the bronze doors and broke windows; mice and beetles, birds and bats moved in.

Eventually, a young and wandering Miw discovered it. Eyed with horror the mice and beetles, the cracked ceiling of Heaven where the bats hung in rows. There was no respect! For several of the Dukes really had been great warriors and catfriend.

The Miw began meeting in that place, on rainy days in winter, to hold their parliaments. That was the end of the mice and beetles. And the Miw invited the owls, who are wing-Miw and catfriend, to nest there respectfully, without owl-pellets and droppings. That was the end of the birds and bats. The place suffered no further insult, except that damp lifted the tiles and young Miw, in their unfu-time, played mad games swerving round and round the octagon, sending the floor-tiles skittering to break in fragments against the black marble walls. But they were punished, if they were caught.

The Miw liked pomp and power and death. They worshipped daily the dead Dukes who had been catfriend. Miw are not afraid of death; it is shown them as kittens, immediately after they are shown birth. No Miw minded dying providing it was timely or fruitful and he had a safe dark place to die, with one friend to lick him comfort. Many of the greatest Miw, especially Matagots, were permitted to die in the Mausoleum, on the higher shelves. Their crouched dried-up presence was a comfort; the living Miw felt blessed by their hollow, shadowed eyes …

Most of the Miw were already gathered. From high up, sitting in their radiating pattern, they looked like the gold beads of the Mother’s necklace. Sehtek sat in the centre, still occasionally sending, but tending her wounded shoulder with a pink tongue betweentimes. The rest crouched low, ears back, resentfully bearing at close range her incessant battering.

There were a few Brethren in one corner. Nibblefur and her grandsons. The grandsons were notorious; huge, for Brethren; huge enough to make even a Miw steady his nerves and his ears as he walked past. Black, with the tattered ears of many an unjust quarrel. Their coats shone greasily from the best of chicken-offal. They lived on the fat of the gutter, terrorising other Brethren out of what they’d found.

They were difficult to tell apart, but not impossible. Ripfur showed the brownness of middle-age round nose and paws; in sunlight, his fur looked all brown, with the ghosts of tabby stripes showing. Tornear was true black, except for five white hairs under his chin, which he held his head down to conceal. Gristle-tongue was fattest by far; the fool of the family, but the dirtiest fighter.

Their mother, Nibblefur, also had an evil reputation, but only for her thoughts. She had moused-out some unpleasantness about every cat in the city, and shared her knowledge generously. From the follies of her youth she had descendants in every part, though most had settled in the surrounding villages to escape her wise-sendings. She spent most of her life in slow journeys round those villages. She too had been black, but age had silvered her nose and ears.

There had been a brisk exchange of sendings between Sehtek and Nibblefur. Nibblefur was reduced to a fit of nervous coughing; crouching close to the floor with her neck outstretched, she sounded as if she was trying to blow the contents of her stomach out through her lungs. But she held her ground, leaning against Ripfur for support.

But the strangest thing lay in another corner. To the human eye, the boy would have borne a grotesque resemblance to a cat. He crouched on his elbows, legs drawn up beneath him, hands clenched to resemble paws. Head down, eyes closed, he seemed to doze.

But to the Miw, he was all too human.

“Why-bring man here? Unfu!”

“Unfu! Unfu! Unfu!”

Sehtek shifted uncomfortably. “Not-man; only small-minnen.”

“Minnen also forbidden.”

Twitching at the disharmony, Amon and Smerdis dropped down inside, leaping from one dusty-bellied, trumpet-blowing statue to another.

Sehtek glared balefully. “Last-come. Now …” And she fed into their assembled minds the murder of the Duke. The Miw kept perfectly still. Only the flicking of their eyes, a sudden tensing of a paw showed their excitement as the Duke fell forward again and the blood flowed red, red, down the table. The boy showed the same eye-and-paw movements, watching his father’s death with the same passionless fascination.

Finally, the bouteiller staggered and died.

“Well-moused!” sent the Miw, cool breath sighing from a thousand nostrils. Some asked to have the scene again. Sehtek refused.

Silence and stillness for fifty breaths.

“Well?” asked Sehtek. “WELL?”

Smerdis rose, twisting his tail into a question-mark. “Not our quarrel. This Duke was not-catfriend.” Little dartings of agreement from the Miw.

“NOT-CATFRIEND?” Sehtek’s rage blasted every ear in the Mausoleum flat. “I will show you not-catfriend.”

She built a vision of another walled city, within the loop of a river. Towers and unknown pennants flapping in the sunlight. Out from the gate wound a procession. Halberdiers in red, then choirboys singing sweet and shrill; priests, swinging censers of scented smoke at the crowds lining the route. Then men carrying torches that sent ragged towers of smoke into the clean morning air. Then the chief magistrate, also in robes of red, red. Lastly, twelve men carrying strong baskets.

In the baskets were Brethren. Some poked out desperate paws, at the hands of the men carrying the baskets; but the men wore thick leather gloves. Others gnawed without hope at the thick wood of their cages. Others lay still, as if already dead.

The procession wound at last, after many hymns, to a great iron basket on an iron stake. Beneath, logs had been piled. A ladder was set up …

Now, even those Brethren who had lain still began to struggle. Uselessly. One by one they were passed up and put into the iron basket; where they lay heaped on each other, and yet still in harmony.

After a priest had said a prayer, the magistrate stepped forward, and took a torch. When the cats saw the flames, they began to struggle and step on each other; but still they did not hurt each other. Then, with a fine flourish, and a roar from the crowd, he thrust his torch down among the logs.

Flames rose. At last the Brethren began to fight, and claw each other hideously to escape the flames. The crowd roared again, to see the Devil revealed in them, in all his hate and rage …

It was a long time before the last paw ceased to move, and the merciful flames hid all.

“It is a great pity the Mother made men,” sent Smerdis.

“Where is that city?” asked the Miw; a sending so awful the very stones seemed to crack.

“Mainz, in High Germany,” sent Sehtek. “The Bishop of Mainz was not catfriend. My sister of Germany sent him a gift of rats, and he died of the swelling-sickness. They not so merry in Mainz now.”

But that did not satisfy the Miw. Red roses of rage blossomed in their minds … memories of the Former Days … Brethren whipped to death for sport; walled up in the foundations of houses for luck; thrown from the tops of newly-built towers to make them impregnable; garlanded with flowers and ploughed into the fields to nourish the corn.

“There is a little lost-magic left in the Brethren,” sent Smerdis. “Men squeeze it from them, like wine from grapes.”

Sehtek drew herself up. “Now say this Duke was not-catfriend!”

There was a blessed darkness, and a great shuddering stillness.

“Kill,” sent the Miw. “Kill, kill, kill.” Their sendings were dull with misery.

“There is a better-way.” Sehtek built another vision. Inside a grey cathedral, other choristers sang evensong by the light of clustered, melting candles. Far above, in the shadowed galleries, a golden Miw leapt from pinnacle to pinnacle. Then climbed down a steepled gilded throne, on to the knee of a cardinal who sat there massive, ponderous of jowl. She coiled round on his scarlet lap, then settled, purring, nose inside tail. The choristers burst into a new tune.

“Do they sing the Magnifi-cat?” asked Smerdis. There was the faintest flicker of amusement from the Miw.

The song ended; the choristers departed. The Cardinal picked up his Miw and carried it to another room. They ate from the same rich table, the Miw taking pieces from the man’s very lips.

Till a red-bearded man burst in. Stood astride, hands on hips. Asked to sit, he would not; he strode about, stared out of the window, whistled a tune, roared with rage one minute and laughed the next, and the laughing was worst.

“Unfu!” sent the Miw, backs rising. “Unfu!”

“Wait.”

The Cardinal took the Miw in his arms, stroking her from head to flicking tail-tip with long movements of his ring-clustered hand. And the Miw soothed the Cardinal, and the Cardinal’s slow words soothed the wild man, and again there was harmony of sorts.

“That is my sister of England. The unfu is Henry and the red-priest, Wolsey. They do not burn Brethren in England. Miw rules man through man. And we have the next Duke …”

The Miw looked afresh at the minnen dozing in the corner. He opened his eyes, took one terrified look round and burst into chaotic grief.

Dreadful. Even at her worst, Sehtek never lost control of her mind; it still fitted into the minds of the other Miw, though it strained them to bursting. But this minnen’s grief was like wolf-jaw and swords and tombs sinking into swamps and dying not one death but many, over and over. Never had the Miw so suffered. Every ear was skull-flattened; backs twitched like a sackful of rats.

It was not to be borne. One by one the Miw walked across to the writhing minnen, lying first beside him, then on top till he seemed covered with a great golden robe. His sobs ceased, his limbs stopped twitching and he slept, far from any pain. There was even a small smile on lips nearly buried in fur. They had taken his mind; for good.

“Keep-safe, here?”

“Teach kitwise?”

“Feed mice-beetles-birds?”

Decided, the Miw rose and stretched to go.

“One-thing remaining,” sent Sehtek. Her mind was fading from weariness and the pain in her shoulder. Again, her pink tongue explored it. But she was still Royal Miw. The others resettled.

“Horse must be told!”

A cold shock of horror filled the Mausoleum. “Horse? Surely it has not come to that?”

“Not-speak Horse in our memory.”

“Not in many-memories.” Pink roses of questions bloomed everywhere. There was something terrible, irrevocable in horse having to be told.

“Horse has forgotten us.” All the minds pushed against Sehtek. She began to rock, wearily; but she held them.

“Horse must be told.”

“Why?”

“Old-custom. Horse ancient-catfriend. Horse is entitled … we may need …”

“Horse may have gone … no longer where he ran.”

“Horse is. Can-feel. Who will go?”

Silence fell. Horse lived unthinkably far … outside the city walls. Horse was a tale to frighten kittens with, by winterfires. The silence deepened. All except in Amon’s mind. He was busy asking Smerdis what all the fuss was about. He had lived all winter with a horse. Warm. Drystraw. Too late, Amon realised he alone was sending, and stopped.

“Who will tell Horse?”

Miw at the edge of the group began drifting out on to the catwalks. Those in the middle, imperceptibly, without unseemly haste, began to follow.

“Wait!” But the drift continued.

“Let Amon go,” sent someone, “since he knows so much about horses.” And in the glimmer of a whisker, Amon and Sehtek found themselves alone.

Except for Nibblefur and grandsons in the corner. “Why yellow-cat go tell horse? Why always yellowcat? Us good-as yellowcat.”

Sehtek turned the remnants of her glare on Nibblefur. It was as well she was fading. Her glare, when the goddess was in-her, had been known to make a she-Miw drop her litter of kitten. . .