Witch Week (11 page)

“I don’t know who done it!” the caretaker was protesting. “But I know there was people sneaking around my building half the night. The dog nearly caught one, right in this very hall.”

“Did you come in here and investigate?” Mr. Wentworth said.

“Door was shut,” said the caretaker. “Thought it was locked.”

Mr. Wentworth turned from him in disgust. “Someone was pretty busy in here all last night,” he said to Mr. Crossley, “and he didn’t even look!”

“Thought it was locked,” repeated the caretaker.

“Oh shut up!” snapped Mr. Wentworth. “And stop your dog peeing on that shoe. It’s Miss Cadwallader’s.”

Charles slipped out into the corridor, trying to keep the grin on his face down to decent proportions. Mr. Wentworth was all right. He must have slipped off to bed after all last night, while Miss Hodge was asking Charles the way. And, better still, everyone thought the shoes had arrived in the hall quite naturally. Charles could have danced and sung.

But here was Dan Smith beside him. That sobered Charles somewhat. “Hey,” said Dan. “Did those seniors catch you last night?”

“No, I ran away,” Charles replied airily.

“You must have run pretty fast!” said Dan. It was grudging, but it was praise, coming from Dan. “Know anything about who did these shoes?” Dan asked, jerking his head toward the hall.

Charles would dearly have loved to say it was him and watch the respect grow on Dan’s face. But he was not that much of a fool. “No,” he said.

“I do,” said Dan. “It was the witch in our class, I bet.”

Mr. Wentworth appeared in the doorway of the hall. There were loud shushings up and down the packed corridor. “Breakfast is going to be late,” Mr. Wentworth shouted. He looked very harrowed. “You can’t expect the kitchen staff to work without shoes. You are all to go to your classrooms and wait there. Meanwhile, teachers and sixth graders are going to be working hard laying all the shoes out in the main quadrangle. When you are called—
when
you are called, understand?—you are to come by classes and pick out the shoes which are yours. Off you all go. Sixth grade stay behind.”

Everyone milled off in a reluctant crowd. Charles was so pleased with himself that he risked grinning at Brian. But Brian was staring dreamily at the wall and did not notice. He did not move or even yell when Simon slapped him absentmindedly around the head. “Where’s Nan Pilgrim?” Simon asked, laughing. “Turned herself invisible?”

Nan was keeping out of the way, lurking in the top corridor by the girls’ bathrooms. From there, she had an excellent view of the quadrangle being covered with row upon row of shoes, and the kitchen ladies tiptoeing about the rows in stockings looking for their workshoes. It did not amuse her. Theresa’s friend Delia Martin and Estelle’s friend Karen Grigg had already made it quite plain that they thought it was Nan’s doing. The fact that these two normally did not speak to one another, or to Nan either, only seemed to make it worse.

B
REAKFAST WAS READY
before 6B had been called to find their shoes. Theresa was forced to walk through the corridors in her blue bedsocks. They were, by this time, quite black underneath, which upset her considerably. Breakfast was so late that assembly was cancelled. Instead, Miss Cadwallader stood up in front of high table, with her face all stringy with displeasure and one foot noticeably damp, and made a short speech.

“A singularly silly trick has been played on the school,” she said. “The people who played it no doubt think it very funny, but they must be able to see by now what a stupid and dishonorable thing they have done. I want them to be honorable now. I want them to come to me and confess. And I want anyone else who knows or suspects who did it to be equally honorable and come and tell me what they know. I shall be in my study all morning. That is all.”

“What is honorable,” Nirupam said loudly, as everyone stood up, “about going and telling tales?”

By saying that, he did Nan a service, whether he meant to or not. No one in 6B wanted a name for telling tales. Nobody went to Miss Cadwallader. Instead, they all went out into the quadrangle, where a little freezing drizzle of rain was now falling, and walked up and down the rows of damp footgear, finding their shoes. Nan was forced to go too.

“Oh look! Here comes Archwitch Dulcinea,” said Simon.

“Why did you do it to your own shoes too, Dulcinea? Thought it would look more innocent, did you?”

And Theresa said, “Really, Nan! My bedsocks are ruined! It isn’t funny!”

“Do something really funny now, Nan,” Karen Grigg suggested.

“Hurry up!” Mr. Crossley shouted from the shelter of the porch. Everyone at once became very busy turning over shoes. The only one who did not was Brian. He simply wandered about, staring into space. In the end, Nirupam found his shoes for him and bundled them into Brian’s lax arms.

“Are you all right?” Nirupam asked him.

“Who? Me? Oh yes,” Brian said.

“Are you sure? One of your eyes is sort of set sideways,” Nirupam said.

“Is it?” Brian asked vaguely, and wandered off.

Nirupam turned severely to Simon. “I think you hit him on the head once too often.”

Simon laughed, a little uneasily. Nirupam was a head taller than he was. “Nonsense! There’s nothing in his head to get hurt.”

“Well, you watch it,” said Nirupam, and might have said more, except that they were interrupted by an annoyed outcry from Dan Smith.

“I’ll get someone for this!” Dan was shouting. He was very pale and cross after last night’s midnight feast, and he looked quite savage. “I’ll get them even if they’re a magicking senior. Someone’s gone off with my running shoes! I can’t find them anywhere.”

“Look again, carefully!” Mr. Crossley bawled from the porch.

This was a queer fact. Dan searched up and down the rows, and so did Charles, until their socks were soaked and their hair was trickling rain, but neither Dan’s spikes nor Charles’s were there. By this time, 7A, 7B, and 7C had been allowed out to collect their shoes too before they all got too wet, and almost the only footgear left was the three odd football boots, the riding boots, and a pair of luminous green trainers that nobody seemed to want. Dan uttered such threats that Charles was glad that it did not seem to occur to Dan that this had anything to do with Charles Morgan.

But it meant that Charles had to go to Mr. Towers next and confess that his running shoes had still not turned up. He was fed up as he stood and trickled rain outside the staff room. After all his trouble!

“I did look, sir,” he assured Mr. Towers.

Mr. Towers glanced at Charles’s soaking hair and rain-dewed glasses. “Anyone can stand in the rain,” he said. “Are you paying for new ones or writing lines?”

“Doing lines,” Charles said resentfully.

“In detention every evening until Christmas then,” Mr. Towers said. The idea seemed to please him. “Wait.” He dodged back into the staff room and came out again with a fat old book. “Here,” he said, handing the book to Charles. “Copy five hundred lines of this out every evening. It will show you what a real schoolboy should be like. When you’ve copied it all, I’ll give you the sequel.”

Charles stood in front of the staff room and looked at the book. It was called
The Pluckiest Boy in School.
It smelled of mildew. Inside, the pages were furry and brownish, and the first line of the story went:
“What ripping fun!” exclaimed Watts Minor. “I’m down for scrum half this afternoon!”

Charles looked from this to the fat, transparent, and useless blister on his finger and felt rather ill. “Magicking hell,” he said.

“Good morning, Charles,” said Miss Hodge, tripping toward the staff room, all fresh and unaware. “That looks like a nice old book. I’m glad to see you doing some serious reading at last.”

She was most disconcerted to receive one of Charles’s heaviest double-barreled glares. What a moody boy he was to be sure! she thought as she neatly stripped off her raincoat. She was equally surprised to find the staff room in some kind of uproar, with a pile of boots and shoes in the middle. Still, there was Mr. Wentworth at last, flying past on his way somewhere else. Miss Hodge stood in his way.

“Oh, Mr. Wentworth, I want to apologize for making that accusation against Charles Morgan.” That was pretty generous of her, she thought, after the way Charles had just looked at her. She smiled generously at Mr. Wentworth.

To her annoyance, Mr. Wentworth simply said, “I’m glad to hear it,” and brushed past her quite rudely. But he did have a lot on his mind, Miss Hodge realized, when Mr. Crossley told her excitedly all about the shoes. She did not hold it against Mr. Wentworth. She collected books—they had gotten spilled all over the floor somehow—and went off to give 6B another English lesson.

She arrived to find Simon Silverson holding aloft
The Pluckiest Boy in School.
“Listen to this!” he was saying.
“Swelling with pride, Watts Minor gazed into the eyes of his one true friend. Here was a boy above all, straight alike in body and mind—”

Theresa and Delia were screaming with laughter, with their faces buried in their knitting. Charles was glaring blue murder.

“Really, Simon!” said Miss Hodge. “That was unworthy of you.” Simon looked at her in astonishment. He knew he never did anything unworthy. “But, Charles,” said Miss Hodge, “I do think you made rather an unfortunate choice of book.” For the second time that day, Charles turned his glare on her. Miss Hodge flinched. Really, if she had not known now that Charles was a nice boy underneath, that glare of his would make her think seriously of the Evil Eye.

Nirupam held up his long arm. “Are we going to do acting again?” he asked hopefully.

“No, we are not,” Miss Hodge said, with great firmness. “Get out your poetry books.”

The lesson, and the rest of the morning, dragged past. Theresa finished her second bootee and cast on stitches for a sweater. Estelle knitted quite a lot of a baby’s bonnet. Brian gave up staring at the wall and instead seemed to be attacked by violent industry. Whenever anyone looked at him, he was scribbling furiously in a different exercise book.

Charles sat and brooded, rather surprised at the things going on in his mind. He was not frightened at all now. He seemed to be accepting the fact he was a witch quite calmly after all. No one had noticed. They all thought the witch was Nan Pilgrim, because of her name, which suited Charles very well. But the really strange thing was the way he had stopped being worried by the witch he had seen being burned. He tried remembering him, cautiously at first, then boldly, when he found it did not bother him. Then he went on to the second witch, who came over the wall. Neither troubled him now. They were in the past: they were gone. It was like having a toothache that suddenly stops. In the peace that came with this, Charles saw that his mind must have been trying to tell him he was going to grow up a witch. And now that he knew, it stopped nagging him. Then, to see if this made him frightened, he thought of inquisitors. It hurts to be burned, he thought, and looked at his fat blister. It had taught him something after
all. And that was: Don’t get found out.

Good, thought Charles. And turned his mind to what he was going to do to Simon Silverson. Dan Smith next, but Simon definitely first. What could he do to Simon that would be worth nearly a whole term’s pocket money? It was difficult. It had to be something bad enough, and yet with no connection with Charles. Charles was quite stumped at first. He wanted it to be artistic. He wanted Simon to suffer. He wanted everyone else to know about it, but not to know it was Charles who did it. What
could
he do?

The last lesson before lunch was the daily PE. Today, it was the boys’ turn in the gym. They were to climb ropes too. Charles sat by the wallbars and pretended to tie his gym shoe. Unlike Nan, he could get up a rope if he wanted, but he did not want to. He wanted to sit and think what to do to Simon. Simon, of course, was one of the first to the ceiling. He saw Charles and shouted something down. The result was that someone from 6C came and dug Charles in the back.

“Simon says you’re to stop lazing about.”

“Simon says that, does he?” said Charles. He stood up. He was inspired. It was something Brian had said last night. That game,
Simon Says.
Suppose it was not just a game. Suppose everything Simon said really came true. At the very worst it ought to be pretty funny. At best, people might even think Simon was a witch.

Charles went up a rope. He dragged himself up it, nice and slow and gentle, so that he could go on thinking. He was obviously not going to be able to stand anywhere near Simon to put the spell on him. Someone would notice. But instinct told Charles that this was not the kind of magic you could work at a distance. It was too strong and personal. What he needed, in order to do it safely, was something which was not Simon himself, but something which belonged to Simon so personally that any witchcraft worked on it would work on Simon at the same time—a detachable piece of Simon, really. What removable parts had Simon? Teeth, toenails, fingernails, hair? He could hardly go up to Simon and pull any of those off him. Wait a minute! Hair. Simon combed his hair this morning. With any luck, there might be some hair stuck in Simon’s comb.