Cat tipped them out on to his hand to be sure, and they were indeed, most disappointingly, beans. They must have been in that tin a very long time. Four of them were wrinkled and shrivelled, and one was so old it was just a withered brown lump. It was clear they were nothing valuable at all.

“Beans!” Cat said disgustedly.

“Oh yes,” said Tonino, “but think of Jack and the Beanstalk.”

They stared at one another. In an enchanter’s basement anything was possible. Both had visions of mighty bean plants growing through the ceiling and on through the roof of the house, and each of them climbing one, away from Master Spiderman and out of his power. And while they stared, they heard the sound of the door being unbolted at the other end of the room.

Cat hastily thrust the handful of beans into his pocket and jammed the lid back on the cannister while Tonino picked up his broom. Tonino waited until Cat had carefully put the old tin back through the cobwebs, into the dust-free circle on the wooden bench where it had stood before, and then reached up with the broom and began virtuously sweeping billows of cobweb off the wall.

Master Spiderman threw open the door and raced down the stone steps, shouting, “No, no, no, you wretched boy! Stop that at once! Don’t you know a spell when you see one?” He came rushing through the room and advanced on Tonino with his hand raised in a fist.

Tonino dropped the broom with a clatter and backed away. Cat was not sure whether Master Spiderman was going to hit Tonino or cast a spell on him, but he got between them quickly anyway. “You’ve no call to hurt him,” he said. “You told us to clean the place up.”

For a moment, Master Spiderman bent over the two of them, clearly seething with rage. Cat smelt the unclean old-man smell from Master Spiderman’s breath and the mildew from his black coat. He looked into the round glaring eyes, and at the moving wrinkles and long hairs on Master Spiderman’s face, and he felt as much sick as he was frightened.

“And you promised us some food when we’d done it,” he added.

Master Spiderman ignored this, but he seemed to control his rage a little. “For this spell,” he said, in that way he had of almost talking to himself. There were little flecks of white round his wide, lipless mouth. “For this spell, I have kept myself alive for countless years beyond my natural span. This spell will change the world. This spell will give me the world! And one miserable boy nearly ruins it by trying to sweep it off the wall!”

“I didn’t know it was a spell,” Tonino protested. “What is it supposed to do?”

Master Spiderman laughed – a private sort of laugh, with his mouth closed as if he were shutting in secrets. “Supposed?” he said. “It is supposed to make a ten-lifed enchanter, who is to be more powerful than any of your Chrestomancis. It will do so, as long as neither of you meddles with it again. Don’t dare touch it!”