Witch Week (7 page)

“Where have you hidden my spikes?” he whispered.

But Dan did not care, as long as the seniors had not heard. “I’ve forgotten,” he whispered. Beyond the bush, the thin boy leaned his head against the fat girl’s head. Dan grinned. “See that? Mixing the breed.” He put his binoculars to his eyes again.

Charles spoke a little louder. “Tell me where you’ve put my spikes, or I’ll shout that you’re here.”

“Then they’ll know you’re here too, won’t they?” Dan whispered. “I told you, magic off!”

“Not till you tell me,” said Charles.

Charles saw that he had no option but to raise a yell and fetch the seniors into the bush. While he was wondering whether he dared, the second pair of seniors came hurrying around the laurel bush. “Hey!” said the boy. “There’s some juniors in that bush. Sue heard them whispering.”

“Right!” said the thin boy and the fat girl. And all four seniors dived at the bush.

Charles let out a squawk of terror and ran. Behind him, he heard cracking branches, leaves swishing, grunts, crunchings, and most unladylike threats from the senior girls. He hoped Dan had been caught. But even while he was hoping, he knew Dan had gotten away. Charles was in the open. The seniors had seen him and it was Charles they were after. He burst out of the shrubbery with all four of them after him. With a finger across his nose to hold his glasses on, he pelted for his life around the corner of the school.

There was nothing in front of him but a long wall and open space. The lower school door was a hundred yards away. The only possible place that was any nearer was the open door of the boys’ locker room. Charles bolted through it without thinking. And skidded to a stop, realizing what a fool he had been. The seniors’ feet were hammering around the corner, and the only way out of the locker room was the open door he had come in by. All Charles could think of was to dodge behind that door and stand there flat against the wall, hoping. There he stood, flattened and desperate, breathing in old sock and mildew and trying not to pant, while four pairs of feet slid to a stop outside the door.

“He’s hiding in there,” said the fat girl’s voice.

“We can’t go in. It’s boys’,” said the other girl. “You two go and bring him out.”

There were breathless grunts from the two boys, and two pairs of heavy feet tramped in through the doorway. The thin boy, by the sound, tramped into the middle of the room. His voice rumbled around the concrete space.

“Where’s he gotten to?”

“Must be behind the door,” rumbled the other. The door was pulled aside. Charles stood petrified at the sight of the senior it revealed. This one was huge. He towered over Charles. He even had a sort of moustache. Charles shook with terror.

But the little angry eyes, high up above the moustache, stared down through Charles, seemingly at the floor and the wall. The bulky face twitched in annoyance. “Nope,” said the senior. “Nothing here.”

“He must have made it to the lower school door,” said the thin boy.

“Magicking little witch!” said the other.

And, to Charles’s utter amazement, the two of them tramped out of the locker room. There was some annoyed exclaiming from the two girls outside, and then all four of them seemed to be going away. Charles stood where he was, shaking, for quite a while after they seemed to have gone. He was sure it was a trick. But, five minutes later, they had still not come back. It was a miracle of some kind!

Charles tottered out into the middle of the room, wondering just what kind of miracle it was that could make a huge senior look straight through you. Now he knew it had happened, Charles was sure the senior had not been pretending. He really had not seen Charles standing there.

“So what did it?” Charles asked the nameless hanging clothes. “Magic?”

He meant it to be a scornful question, the kind of thing you say when you give the whole thing up. But, somehow, it was not. As he said it, a huge, terrible suspicion which had been gathering, almost unnoticed, at the back of Charles’s head, like a headache coming on, now swung to the front of his mind, like a headache already there. Charles began shaking again.

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t that. It was something else!”

But the suspicion, now it was there, demanded to be sent away at once, now, completely. “All right,” Charles said. “I’ll prove it. I know how. I hate Dan Smith anyway.”

He marched up to Dan’s locker and opened it. He looked at the jumble of clothes and shoes inside. He had searched his locker twice now. He had searched all of them twice. He was sick of looking in lockers. He took up Dan’s spiked running shoes, one in each hand, and backed away with them to the middle of the room.

“Now,” he said to the shoes, “you vanish.” He tapped them together, sole to spiked sole, to make it clear to them. “Vanish,” he said. “Abracadabra.” And, when nothing happened, he threw both shoes into the air, to give them every chance. “Hey presto,” he said.

Both shoes were gone, in midair, before they reached the slimy floor.

Charles stared at the spot where he had last seen them. “I didn’t mean it,” he said hopelessly. “Come back.”

Nothing happened. No shoes appeared.

“Oh well,” said Charles. “Perhaps I did mean it.”

Then, very gently, almost reverently, he went over and shut Dan’s locker. The suspicion was gone. But the certainty which hung over Charles in its place was so heavy and so hideous that it made him want to crouch on the floor. He was a witch. He would be hunted like the witch he had helped and burned like the fat one. It would hurt. It would be horrible. He was very, very scared—so scared it was like being dead already, cold, heavy, and almost unable to breathe.

Trying to pull himself together, he took his glasses off to clean them. That made him notice that he was, actually, crouching on the floor beside Dan’s locker. He dragged himself upright. What should he do? Might not the best thing be to get it over now, and go straight to Miss Cadwallader and confess?

That seemed an awful waste, but Charles could not seem to think of anything else to do. He shuffled to the door and out into the chilly evening. He had always known he was wicked, he thought. Now it was proved. The witch had kissed him because she had known he was evil too. Now he had grown so evil that he needed to be stamped out. He wouldn’t give the inquisitors any trouble, not like some witches did. Witchcraft must show all over him anyway. Someone had already noticed and written that note about it. Nan Pilgrim had accused him of conjuring up all those birds in music yesterday. Charles thought he must have done that without knowing he had, just as he had made himself invisible to the seniors just now. He wondered how strong a witch he was. Were you more wicked, the stronger you were? Probably. But weak or powerful, you were burned just the same. And he was in nice time for the autumn bonfires. It was nearly Halloween now. By the time they had legally proved him a witch, it would be November 5, and that
would be the end of it.

He did not know it was possible to feel so scared and hopeless.

Thinking and thinking, in a haze of horror, Charles shuffled his way to Miss Cadwallader’s room. He stood outside the door and waited, without even the heart to knock. Minutes passed. The door opened. Seeing the misty oblong of bright light, Charles braced himself.

“So you didn’t find them?” said Mr. Towers.

Charles jumped. Though he could not see what Mr. Towers was doing here, he said, “No, sir.”

“I’m not surprised, if you took your glasses off to look,” said Mr. Towers.

Tremulously, Charles hooked his glasses over his ears. They were ice cold. He must have had them in his hand ever since he took them off to clean. Now that he could see, he saw he was standing outside the staff room, not Miss Cadwallader’s room at all. Why was that? Still he could just as easily confess to Mr. Towers. “Please, I deserve to be punished, sir. I—”

“Take a black mark for that,” Mr. Towers said coldly. “I don’t like boys who crawl. Now, either you can pay for a new pair of shoes, or you can write five hundred lines every night until the end of the term. Come to me tomorrow morning and tell me which you decide to do. Now get out of here.”

He slammed the door of the staff room in Charles’s face. Charles stood and looked at it. That was a fierce choice Mr. Towers had given him. And a black mark. But it had jolted his horror off sideways somehow. He felt his face going red. What a fool he was! Nobody knew he was a witch. Instinct had told him this, and taken his feet to the staff room instead of to Miss Cadwallader. But only luck had saved him confessing to Mr. Towers. He had better not be that stupid again. As long as he kept his mouth shut and worked no more magic, he would be perfectly safe. He almost smiled as he trudged off to supper.

But he could not stop thinking about it. Around and around and around, all through supper. How wicked was he? Could he do anything about it? Was it enough just not to do any magic? Could you go somewhere and be de-magicked, like clothes were dry-cleaned? If not, and he was found out, was it any use running away? Where did witches run to, after they had run through people’s backyards? Was there any certain way of being safe?

“Oh magic!” someone exclaimed, just beside him. “I left my book in the playroom!” Charles jumped and hummed, like the school gong when it was hit, at the mere word.

“Don’t swear,” said the monitor in charge.

Then Theresa Mullett, from the end of the table, called out in a way that was not quite jeering, “Nan, won’t you do something interesting and miraculous for us? We know you can.” Charles jumped and hummed again.

“No, I can’t,” said Nan.

But Theresa, and Delia Martin too, kept on asking. “Nan, high table’s got some lovely bananas. Won’t you say a spell and fetch them over?”

“Nan, I feel like some ice cream. Conjure some up.”

“Nan, do you really worship the devil?”

Each time they said any of these things, Charles jumped and hummed. Though he knew it was entirely to his advantage to have everyone think Nan Pilgrim was the witch, he wanted to scream at the girls to stop. He was very relieved, halfway through supper, when Nan jumped up and stormed out of the dining room.

Nan went straight to the deserted library. Very well, she thought. If everyone was so sure she was guilty, she could at least take advantage of it and do something she had always wanted to do and never dared to do before. She took down the encyclopedia and looked up Dulcinea Wilkes. Curiously enough, the fat book fell open at that page. It seemed as if a lot of people at Larwood House had taken an interest in the Archwitch. If so, they had all been as disappointed as Nan. The laws against witchcraft were so severe that most information about Nan’s famous ancestress was banned. The entry was quite short.

WILKES, DULCINEA. 1760–1790. Notorious witch, known as the Archwitch. Born in Steeple Bumpstead, Essex, she moved to London in 1781, where she soon became well known for her nightly broomstick flights around St. Paul’s and the Houses of Parliament. Brooms are still sometimes call “Dulcinea’s Ponies.” Dulcinea took a leading part in the Witches’ Uprising of 1789. She was arrested and burned, along with the other leaders. While she was burning, it is said that the lead on the roof of St. Paul’s melted and ran off the dome. She continued to be burned in effigy every bonfire day until 1845, when the practice was discontinued owing to the high price of lead.

Nan sighed and put the encyclopedia back. When the bell rang, she went slowly to the classroom to do the work that had been set during the day. It was called devvy at Larwood House; no one knew why. Everyone else was there when Nan arrived. The room was full of the slap of exercise books around Brian Wentworth’s head and Brian squealing. But the noise stopped as Nan came in, showing that Mr. Crossley had come in behind her.

“Charles Morgan,” said Mr. Crossley. “Mr. Wentworth wants to see you.”

Charles dragged his mind with a jolt from imaginary flames whirling around him. He got up and trudged off, like a boy in a dream, along corridors and through swinging doors to the part of the school where teachers who lived in the school had their private rooms. He had only been to Mr. Wentworth’s room once before. He had to tear his mind away from thoughts of burning and look at the names on the doors. He supposed Mr. Wentworth wanted him because of his beastly shoes. Blast and magic Dan Smith! He knocked on the door.

“Come in!” said Mr. Wentworth.

He was sitting in an armchair smoking a pipe. The room was full of strong smoke. Charles was surprised to see how shabby Mr. Wentworth’s room was. The armchair was worn out. There were holes in the soles of Mr. Wentworth’s slippers, and holes in the hearthrug the slippers rested on. But the gas fire was churring away comfortably and the room was beautifully warm compared with the rest of school.

“Ah, Charles.” Mr. Wentworth laid his pipe in an ashtray that looked like Brian’s first attempt at pottery. “Charles, I was told this afternoon that you might be a witch.”

C
HARLES HAD THOUGHT
, in the locker room, that he had been as frightened as a person could possibly be. Now he discovered this was not so. Mr. Wentworth’s words seemed to hit him heavy separate blows. Under the blows, Charles felt as if he were dissolving and falling away somewhere far, far below. He thought at first he was falling somewhere so sickeningly deep that the whole of his mind had become one long horrible scream. Then he felt he was rising up as he screamed. The shabby room was blurred and swaying, but Charles could have sworn he was now looking down on it from somewhere near the ceiling. He seemed to be hanging there, screaming, looking down on the top of his own head, and the slightly bald top of Mr. Wentworth’s head, and the smoke writhing from the pipe in the ashtray. And that terrified him too. He must have divided into two parts. Mr. Wentworth was bound to notice.