We hurried towards the boat as fast as we could but were hampered by Arkwright, who was considerably weakened and kept having to pause to catch his breath. At any moment we expected another attack and Claw kept circling, alert for danger. At last we reached the shore, where Deana Beck was waiting for us. At first it looked like we'd have to make two trips but the Spook wouldn't hear of it. The boat sat dangerously low in the water but we made the crossing safely.
'You're welcome to spend the night back at the cottage,' Deana offered.
'We thank you for the offer, but you've done enough already,' said the Spook. 'No, we'll be on our way just as fast as we can.'
The ferryman had called Deana Beck 'Daft Deana', though she seemed as sensible as any woman I'd ever met. By 'daft' he'd really meant 'too brave'. She'd certainly risked her life to row us out to Belle Isle. If the witches found out that Deana had helped us, her days on this earth would be numbered.
Our journey south was relatively slow but the attack we feared never came. I didn't know how many witches had entered the tunnel from the lake, but I'd either killed or badly wounded the one who'd seized my ankle. Perhaps Grimalkin had slain the rest – or at least delayed them, giving us a chance to get away.
Just before nightfall, we halted amongst the trees. By now we were clear of the lake and the threat of attack by water witches had abated.
After nibbling a little cheese from the Spook's supply, Arkwright immediately fell into a deep sleep. He was exhausted after his ordeal, and walking in bare feet wasn't helping. But despite his pale cheeks and gaunt face he was breathing slowly and deeply.
Alice touched his forehead with her fingertips. 'Ain't that cold considering what he's gone through. Neck could get infected though.' She looked up at the Spook. 'Want me to see what I can do?'
'If you think you can help him, by all means go ahead,' he replied, but I could see him watching her very carefully. She held out her hand for the water bottle and my master handed it to her. From her pouch she drew a small piece of leaf – a herb I didn't recognize - dampened it and pressed it against Arkwright's neck to cover the wounds.
'Did Lizzie teach you that?' asked the Spook.
'Some of it,' she answered. 'But when I stayed at the farm, Tom's mam taught me lots of things as well.'
The Spook nodded in approval at Alice's reply.
There was a silence and I decided to tell him about Grimalkin. I knew he wouldn't like the idea of her being involved in any way and I wondered what he'd make of it.
'Mr Gregory,' I said. 'There's something I should tell you. Grimalkin used a mirror to warn me about the witches. Then she came to the surface of the pool to talk to me. She even fought off some of the witches and helped me to escape . . .'
The Spook looked at me in surprise. 'Mirrors again? When was that, lad?'
'Back in the second tower. I saw her image in the water. She said something strange – that the water witches were "our enemies".'
'I would never want to admit to having anything in common with the dark,' said the Spook, scratching at his beard, 'but as the Pendle clans seem to be at war, perhaps that conflict extends to fighting water witches up north. But why Grimalkin would try to help you puzzles me. After what you did last time you met, I'd have thought she wanted you dead!'
'But if Grimalkin's really on our side, that's got to help. And we need all the help we can get!' I said.
The Spook shook his head firmly. 'There's no doubt that witches being at odds with each other can only weaken them and further our cause. But I keep telling you – we can't side with any of them. The Fiend may well try to compromise you and thus bend you slowly towards the dark. So slowly that you might not even realize that it's happening!'
'I'd never serve the dark!' I said angrily.
'Don't be so sure, lad,' the Spook continued. 'Even your own mother once served the dark! Remember that. It could happen to you.'
I had to bite my lip to stop myself giving an angry retort. The silence lengthened. The Spook stared at me hard. 'Cat got your tongue, lad? Could it be that you're sulking? Can't you stand to hear a few home truths?'
I shrugged. 'I can't believe you think I could end up on the side of the dark. I thought you knew me better than that!'
'I just worry about it, lad. That's all. It's a possibility we face. That you might be corrupted. I'll say this to you now, and I don't ever want you to forget it. Don't ever keep secrets from me. Tell me everything, no matter how badly you think I'll take it. Is that clear? Everything! These are dangerous times and I'm the only person you can truly trust,' he said pointedly, looking in Alice's direction. 'Do you understand?'
I could see Alice watching my face very carefully. I felt sure she was wondering whether I'd tell him that she was preparing to use a blood jar to keep the Fiend at bay. If the Spook knew that, he'd send her away. That or worse. He might even consider her an enemy. He bound witches in pits and Alice had once come very close to suffering that fate.
I knew a lot hinged on my reply. The Spook was my master but Alice was my friend and an increasingly powerful ally against the dark.
'Well?' said the Spook
'I understand,' I told him.
'That's good, lad.'
He nodded but didn't comment and the conversation came to an end. We took it in turns to stand guard, watching for danger. Arkwright slept on so we decided to spend the night in the same spot.
But my sleep was fitful. What I'd just done filled me with fear and uncertainty. My dad had brought me up to be honest and truthful, but Mam, although she was an enemy of the dark, had told Alice to use anything to keep me safe from the Fiend. Anything . . .
CHAPTER 26
The unthinkable
Despite the danger from the dark, we needed to build up our strength, so at dawn, before continuing south, we breakfasted on rabbits caught and cooked by Alice. Although Arkwright was somewhat better, our progress was still slow and we were further delayed by a detour to Cartmel to buy him a new pair of boots.
On finally reaching the coast, we had a long wait for the tide to reach full ebb. The Spook kept his promise to the hermit, and in addition to paying the guide, contributed three silver coins to the fund to support the families of those who'd drowned.
We approached the mill at dusk. But at the edge of the moat Claw warned us that something was badly wrong. Her hackles rose and she began to growl. Then Alice sniffed three times and turned to me, alarm on her face.
'Something nasty ahead. Don't like it, Tom!'
Arkwright looked down at the moat and frowned. Then he knelt, dipped his forefinger into the murky water and touched it briefly to his lips.
'The salt concentration's high. Nothing from the dark could cross that. Maybe something's got out.'
I remembered the water witch and the skelt, both captive in pits under the house. Had they escaped?
'I tipped five barrels of salt into the moat,' I told him. 'But I didn't put any into the pits.'
'Even so, Master Ward, there should still be enough in there to keep them docile. If anything's got loose, it must've had some serious help!' said Arkwright.
'Aye,' the Spook agreed, 'and that moat would be no barrier to the most powerful creature from the dark – the Fiend himself!'
Arkwright nodded and the three of us followed in his wake as he strode across the moat. He led us down the side of the house towards the waterwheel, with Claw at his side. Suddenly he halted. There was a body lying face down on the ground. He turned it over with his new boot.
The man's throat had been torn out, yet there was little blood to be seen. His body had been drained, probably by a water witch. But then I looked at the corpse's face, which was frozen in horror and pain. The mouth was open, the front teeth broken stumps. It was one of the press gang – the sergeant, who'd fled the house first and run towards me before changing his mind at the sight of the dogs.
'It's one of a gang of deserters I'd a run-in with north of the bay,' Arkwright said to the Sp
ook. 'They made what I thought were empty threats. Said they'd find me and sort me out. Well, this one got sorted out all right. In the wrong place at the wrong time just about sums it up.'
He walked on and halted at the porch and I heard him utter a curse. When we drew level, I saw why. The front door had been ripped from its hinges. It might well be the work of a water witch.
'We need to search the house first to see if anything's still lurking inside. It's not the deserters we need to worry about. It's what killed them,' Arkwright said.
He lit two candles and handed one to Alice. My master left his bag just inside the door and moved cautiously into the first room, his staff in his right hand, his silver chain in his left. Carrying the other candle, Arkwright was unarmed and so was Alice, but I had my staff at the ready.
Claw began to growl as we crossed the bare wooden floorboards and I expected something to rush at us from the shadows at any moment. That didn't happen but we saw something that brought us to a sudden halt.
Burned into the floor was a series of footprints, nine in all, and each had the shape of a cloven hoof. They began in the middle of the room and ended just short of the kitchen door. It suggested that the Fiend had materialized there, taken those nine steps and then disappeared again. So where was he now? It sent a chill right to my heart. He might appear again at any moment.
But there was nothing to do but go on, and without a word we nervously entered the kitchen. Here Arkwright reached across the sink to the window ledge and grasped the large knife he'd shown me during our first lesson together. The door that gave access to the stairs was wide open. Was there something up in one of the bedrooms?
After commanding Claw to stay in the kitchen and guard our backs, Arkwright led the way up, with the Spook at his shoulder. I stood with Alice on the landing while they searched, waiting tensely, listening to their boots clumping through each bedroom. Again there was nothing. After that there was just the large room at the top of the house which housed Arkwright's library. No sooner had they entered it than Arkwright let out a loud cry of anguish. Thinking he was hurt or under attack, I rushed up the stairs to help.
As soon as I entered the room it was clear why he'd cried out. The coffins of his mam and dad had been hurled from their trestles and smashed. Earth and bones were heaped on the floorboards. And there were more cloven hoof prints burned into the boards.
Arkwright was beside himself with grief and rage, shaking from head to foot. Only gradually did the Spook manage to calm him down.
'The Fiend did this,' my master told him. 'He did it to rile you. He wants a red mist of anger to cloud your judgement. Stay calm for all of our sakes. When this is over, we'll put your parents to rights again but now we need to check the pits.'
Arkwright took a deep breath and nodded. We left Claw in the kitchen, and instead of using the trapdoor, we went outside again and approached the door next to the waterwheel.
'You stay outside, lad,' the Spook whispered. 'Bill and I will deal with this!'
I obeyed as Alice, giving me a little wave, followed them inside. But they'd been gone for less than a minute when something gleamed in the darkness to my right. There was a loud, angry hiss and two menacing eyes stared back into mine. I watched apprehensively as something resembling the leg of an enormous insect slowly emerged from the shadows.
It was grey, multi-jointed and very long indeed. The leg of something thin but monstrous. A second limb followed and next came a head. And what a head! Something I'd never seen even in my most scary nightmares: a very thin snout, the nose flat, the ears laid back against the bony, elongated head, and close-set eyes which stared right into mine. It was the skelt.
I tried to call out but I couldn't even manage to open my mouth. As it moved closer and closer, its eyes never left mine and I felt the strength leaving me. I was like a rabbit transfixed by the gaze of a deadly stoat. My brain didn't seem to be working properly and my body was paralysed.
Upright, it would have been taller than me. In addition to that narrow head, its long tubular body had two segments which were hard and ridged, like that of a crab or lobster, and barnacle-encrusted like the bottom of a boat. Its eight legs, however, were more like those of a spider, its movements delicate and precise, its joints creaking and crepitating as it moved.
Suddenly the skelt surged towards me, all eight legs a flickering blur, and scuttled right up my body, hurling me backwards to the ground. I was winded by the fall and now its weight was pressing against me: its scrabbling legs lay across my arms and legs, pinning me down so that I was helpless. I stared up into the ugly toothless snout, which opened just inches from my face, the creature enveloping me in a stench of dank mouldering loam and rot from stagnant pools. And from the widening mouth a long tube of translucent white bone began to extend towards me. I remembered how Arkwright had told me that a skelt had no tongue; instead it used this bone-tube to pierce its victim and suck up its blood.
Something forced my head back and there was a sudden excruciating pain in my throat. The sharp tube that protruded from the mouth of the skelt suddenly changed colour and became red. It was sucking my blood and there was nothing I could do. The pain intensified. How much would it take? I began to panic. It might continue to feed until my heart stopped.
It was then that I heard the noises of running feet and a cry of dismay from Alice. There was a sudden loud thwack followed by a crunching sound. The skelt suddenly withdrew the bone-tube from my throat and rolled away from me.
The paralysis had left me and I struggled onto my knees in time to see Arkwright holding a blood-stained stone in both hands, then lifting it high before bringing it down hard on the skelt's head. There was a cracking, crunching noise again, which ended with a sickening squelch: the skelt's whole body twitched, its legs going into a death spasm. Then it lay still, a pool of blood and fluid spreading out from its head, which had cracked open like an egg. I lurched to my knees, about to thank him but he spoke first.
'An interesting creature, Master Ward,' he observed drily as Alice and the Spook helped me to my feet. Breathing hard and fast after the exertion, he placed the stone down beside the dead skelt. 'Very rare, as I once told you. Not many people are fortunate enough to see one at such close proximity.'
'Oh, Tom, I shouldn't have left you,' Alice cried, squeezing my hand. 'I thought it would still be inside under the mill.'
'Well, no real harm done in the end,' observed Arkwright. 'Thank Alice for that, Master Ward. She sensed that something was wrong out here. Now let's get back inside and check the other pit.'
As we'd expected, the water witch had escaped – or, more likely, been freed. The bars were bent apart and there were webbed witch footprints in the soft earth leading away. Smaller prints than those made by the skelt.
'No doubt this is the work of the Fiend,' said the Spook. 'He likes to demonstrate his power.'
'But where's the witch now?' Arkwright asked.
Claw was summoned and she made a thorough search of the garden; the two spooks followed her closely, weapons at the ready.
'She ain't here, Tom, that's for sure,' Alice told me. 'Would have sniffed her out myself otherwise.'
'Not if the Fiend's close by though,' I said with a shiver. 'Neither of us suspected Morwena on the barge.'
Alice nodded and looked really scared.
'But where could the witch be hiding?' I asked.
'She's probably across the moat and escaped into the marsh,' Alice said. 'Old Nick could've carried her over. Salt ain't going to stop him, is it? Too strong, he is, for old tricks such as that!'
When the search proved fruitless, we retreated to the kitchen, where I made up the fire in the stove. Threatened by the dark, we didn't eat but at least we were warm and took it in turns to keep watch. Claw was put on guard outside to warn us if anything approached from the marsh.