Witch Week

  “Please don’t throw chalk at me!” Nan said.

  At that moment, there was a knock at the door and Brian Wentworth put his head around it into the room. “Are you free yet, Dad?”

  “No,” said Mr. Wentworth.

  Both of them looked at Nan sitting on the floor. “What’s she doing?” Brian asked.

  “She says she’s possessed. Go away and come back in ten minutes,” Mr. Wentworth said. “Get up, Nan.”

  Brian obediently shut the door and went away. Nan struggled to her feet. It was almost as difficult as climbing a rope. She wondered a little how it felt to be Brian, with your father one of the teachers, but mostly she wondered what Mr. Wentworth was going to do to her. He had on his most harrowed, worried look, and he was staring again at the three papers on his desk.

  “So you think you’re possessed?” he said.

  “Oh no,” Nan said. “All I meant was it was like it. I knew I was going to do something awful before I started, but I didn’t know what until I started describing the food. Then I tried to stop and I couldn’t somehow.”

  “Do you often get taken that way?” Mr. Wentworth asked.

  Nan was about to answer indignantly No, when she realized that she had gone for Brian with the witch’s broom in exactly the same way straight after lunch. And many and many a time, she had impulsively written things in her journal. She fitted her shoe into a parquet block again, and hastily took it away. “Sometimes,” she said, in a low, guilty mutter. “I do sometimes—when I’m angry with people—I write what I think in my journal.”

  “And do you write notes to teachers too?” asked Mr. Wentworth.

  “Of course not,” said Nan. “What would be the point?”

  “But someone in 6B has written Mr. Crossley a note,” said Mr. Wentworth. “It accused someone in the class of being a witch.”

  The serious, worried way he said it made Nan understand at last. So that was why Mr. Crossley had talked like that and then been to see Mr. Wentworth. And they thought Nan had written the note. “The unfairness!” she burst out. “How can they think I wrote the note and call me a witch too! Just because my name’s Dulcinea!”

  “You could be diverting suspicion from yourself,” Mr. Wentworth pointed out. “If I asked you straight out—”

  “I am not a witch!” said Nan. “And I didn’t write that note. I bet that was Theresa Mullett or Simon Silverson. They’re both born accusers! Or Daniel Smith,” she added.

  “Now, I wouldn’t have picked on Dan,” Mr. Wentworth said. “I wasn’t aware he could write.”

  The sarcastic way he said that showed Nan that she ought not to have mentioned Theresa or Simon. Like everyone else, Mr. Wentworth thought of them as the real girl and the real boy. “Someone accused me,” she said bitterly.

  “Well, I’ll take your word for it that you didn’t write the note,” Mr. Wentworth said. “And next time you feel a possession coming on, take a deep breath and count up to ten, or you may be in serious trouble. You have a very unfortunate name, you see. You’ll have to be very careful in future. How did you come to be called Dulcinea? Were you called after the Archwitch?”

  “Yes,” Nan admitted. “I’m descended from her.”

  Mr. Wentworth whistled. “And you’re a witch-orphan too, aren’t you? I shouldn’t let anyone else know that, if I were you. I happen to admire Dulcinea Wilkes for trying to stop witches being persecuted, but very few other people do. Keep your mouth shut, Nan—and don’t ever describe food in front of Lord Mulke again either. Off you go now.”

  Nan fumbled her way out of the study and plunged down the stairs. Her eyes were so fuzzy with indignation that she could hardly see where she was going. “What does he take me for?” she muttered to herself as she went. “I’d rather admit to being descended from—from Attila the Hun or—or Guy Fawkes. Or anyone.”

  It was around that time that Mr. Towers, who had stood over Charles while Charles hunted unavailingly for his running shoes in the boys’ locker room, finally smothered a long yawn and left Charles to go on looking by himself. “Bring them to me in the staff room when you’ve found them,” he said.

  Charles sat down on a bench, alone among gray lockers and green walls. He glowered at the slimy gray floor and the three odd football boots that always lay in one corner. He looked at nameless garments withering on pegs. He sniffed the smell of sweat and old socks. “I hate everything,” he said. He had searched everywhere. Dan Smith had found a really cunning place for those shoes. The only way Charles was going to find them was by Dan telling him where they were.

  Charles ground his teeth and stood up. “All right. Then I’ll ask him,” he said. Like everyone else, he knew Dan was in the shrubbery spying on seniors. Dan made no secret of it. He had got his uncle to send him a pair of binoculars so that he could get a really close view. And the shrubbery was only around the corner from the locker room. Charles thought he could risk going there, even if Mr. Towers suddenly came back. The real risk was from the seniors in the shrubbery. There was an invisible line around the shrubbery, just like the one Nan had described between the boys and the girls in 6B. Anyone younger than a senior who got found in the shrubbery could be most thoroughly beaten up by the senior who found them. Still, Charles thought, as he set off, Dan was not a senior either. That should help.

  The shrubbery was a messy tangle of huge evergreen bushes, with wet grass in between. Charles’s almost-dry shoes were soaked again before he found Dan. He found him quite quickly. Since it was a cold evening and the grass was so wet, there were only two pairs of seniors there, and they were all in the most trodden part, on either side of a mighty laurel bush. Ah! thought Charles. He crept to the laurel bush and pushed his face in among the wet and shiny leaves. Dan was there, among the dry branches inside.

  “Dan!” whispered Charles.

  Dan took his binoculars from his eyes with a jerk and whirled around. When he saw Charles’s face leaning in among the leaves at him, beaming its nastiest double-barreled glare, he seemed almost relieved. “Pig off!” he whispered. “Magic out of here!”

  “What have you done with my spikes?” said Charles.

  “Whisper, can’t you?” Dan whispered. He peered nervously through the leaves at the nearest pair of seniors. Charles could see them too. They were a tall, thin boy and a very fat girl—much fatter than Nan Pilgrim—and they did not seem to have heard anything. Charles could see the thin boy’s fingers digging into the girl’s fat where his arm was around her. He wondered how anyone could enjoy grabbing, or watching, such fatness.

  “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.