by Eva Ibbotson
Chapter Nineteen
The prison crouched on its hill, surrounded by warehouses and factories. Even by day it was a grim building, but at night, rearing out of the mist, it looked deeply sinister.
Dora and Mr Knacksap walked up to the main gate just as the clock was striking eleven. There was no one about; they could hear the echo of their own footsteps. Dora wasn’t so much nervous as shy, and she was carrying a powerful electric torch because stone magic depends on being able to see the victim’s eyes.
‘I’m sure you’re going to do splendidly, dear,’ said Mr Knacksap in his oily voice – and pressed the big brass bell.
They could hear it shrilling and then a uniformed guard came out, carrying a gun.
‘My friend is feeling faint,’ said Mr Knacksap. ‘I wonder if you could help?’
‘This isn’t a bloomin’ hospital,’ said the guard. ‘It’s a pris—’
And then he didn’t say anything more.
It was almost too easy. If Mr Knacksap hadn’t been so ignorant, he’d have realized how honoured he was to see such a powerful witch at work. A second guard appeared, wanting to know what was going on, and then he too fell silent. Mr Knacksap pushed Dora through the crack in the gate and into the guardroom where two more men were playing cards – and in an instant even the playing cards they were holding turned to stone.
Within half an hour, the prison was full of statues. Statues of the warders in charge of each corridor, one caught as he peered into the spy-hole of a cell . . . A statue of the chief warder, sitting in his office – a statue with ear-phones because he’d been listening to the radio to make the long night pass more quickly. There was a statue of a patrol man, still shouting at his dog, and a most graceful one of the dog itself, an Alsatian whom Dora had looked at just before it sprang at her throat.
‘Well, that seems to be it,’ said Mr Knacksap when they had walked up and down the corridors and the winding iron stairs without anybody challenging them. ‘Now you just go home and make sure you’re on that train, otherwise you won’t be ready for your Lewis when he comes.’
Dora had hoped he might ask her to stay till he had found his Cousin Alfred. She was curious to see what a little boy with ringlets, who’d let Lewis have a lick of his lollipop, looked like after his time in prison. But the furrier took her firmly to the gate. He didn’t even say thank you, or hail a taxi, or give her a kiss.
But Dora was a humble witch. She turned up her collar and trudged out into the night.
‘Oh, Li-Li, not that one! Please! He looks so young.’
An hour had passed and Heckie sat in a small
cloakroom off the prison yard, facing her first prisoner. She had kicked off her shoe and her Toe of Transformation felt icy on the bare tiles.
‘Surely he can’t have done anything terrible?’ Heckie went on.
The furrier leant forward. ‘He strangled a little girl in cold blood,’ he hissed – and the prisoner looked up, puzzled. They couldn’t be talking about him, surely? He was doing three years for house-breaking.
But Heckie had believed Mr Knacksap. She leant forward and touched the young man with her knuckle – and then even the horrible Mr Knacksap gasped in wonder.
There are no words that can describe the beauty of a snow leopard. Their coats are a misty grey with black rosettes that are clouded by the depth of the rich fur. Their golden eyes stare out of a face that belongs on shields or banners, it is so grave and mythical – and when they move, their long, thick tails curve and coil and circle in a never-ending dance.
Mr Knacksap had retreated behind a chair, his hand in the pocket of his coat where he kept a gun, but Heckie knew her job. She had made the leopard as sleepy as the prisoner had been. The great cat yawned slowly and delicately. Then it loped off, out of the door, through the wire tunnel, and up the ramp to the first lorry which had SIMPSON’S CIRCUS painted on its side.
Everything was going the way Mr Knacksap had planned. The prisoners had been woken and told they were going to be moved to a new jail with better food and more space, and they shuffled out of their cells, half-asleep, giving no trouble. Nat, who brought them to Heckie, didn’t need the sub-machine gun he’d insisted on carrying.
And how Heckie worked! She turned one prisoner and then two and three and four . . . Sometimes she stopped when a particularly innocent-looking prisoner was brought to her, but always Mr Knacksap would bend over her and hiss some frightful lie into her ear and she would go on with her job.
When she had changed over fifty prisoners, she swayed and her head fell forward. Mr Knacksap had no idea what he was asking her to do. Turning one person into an animal can leave a witch completely exhausted. Turning three hundred . . . well, witches have died from over-straining themselves like that. But the furrier knew exactly how to get round her.
‘Dearest Hecate,’ he said with his gooey smile, ‘if you knew how happy you are making me!’
That did it, of course. Heckie lifted her head, blew on her throbbing knuckle and got to work again. And by one in the morning, her task was done.
But if Heckie had hoped that Mr Knacksap would thank her or give her a kiss or order a taxi, she, like Dora, had hoped in vain. As the door of the lorry slammed on the last of the leopards, Heckie let herself out of a side door and half limped, half staggered, home.
But though she fell straight into bed, Heckie couldn’t sleep. Her Toe of Transformation ached and stabbed every time she moved, and when her knuckle caught on the sheet, she flinched with pain.
After an hour, she got up and fetched the dragworm and packed him carefully in his tartan shopping basket. What she had decided to do probably wouldn’t work out, but it was her only chance, for familiars never thrive except with witches, and powerful ones at that. It wasn’t as though she was asking anything for herself. Heckie knew that Dora wanted nothing more to do with her – but could anybody turn away something so appealing and unusual as the dragworm?
Dora, too, was overtired and couldn’t sleep, and after a while she gave up trying and put on her boiler suit and went downstairs.
The wardrobe was lying flat in the van that Dora had hired to take her furniture to be stored. Everything else had already gone to the warehouse to wait till Dora knew what she would need in Paradise Cottage. Only the wardrobe was left and as Dora approached, the wood spirit floated out and gave her a shy and wavery smile.
Dora had not wanted a ghost at all, and when the spirit first started floating about among her coathangers, she had been quite annoyed. But gradually she had become fond of it. It still didn’t say much except ‘Don’t chop down the wardrobe,’ but in its own way the thing was affectionate. Dora would have liked to take the wardrobe with her to Paradise Cottage, but Lewis did not care for ghosts. The first time he had come to tea and the spirit had called down from the bedroom, Lewis had leapt from the sofa and dropped his cup cake on the floor.
Dora had found some people to buy the stonemason’s business, but suppose they got annoyed with the poor spirit? Suppose in a fit of anger they did chop down the wardrobe. Dora would never forgive herself.
Could her friend really refuse to take in this doleful ghost? It wasn’t as though Dora was asking anything for herself. She knew Heckie never wanted to see her again. But could Heckie, who had never turned away a stray in her life, refuse to give a home to this poor sad thing?
And Dora climbed into the cab and drove up the hill towards the town.
Chapter Twenty
The cheese wizard went to bed early. Serving in his shop by day and doing magic on his cheeses at night made Mr Gurgle very tired. But on the night of Heckie’s farewell party, he was woken in the small hours by an odd tapping noise. Tap, tap, tap, it went, and then stopped again, and just as he was dropping off, it began once more.
‘Oh, bother!’ said Mr Gurgle, and got out of bed and put on his slippers. The tapping seemed to be coming from right below him, from the cellar. Could his prize cheese be learning to tap dance? Sometimes peo
ple who couldn’t walk very well got on better when they tried to move to music.
But when he got down to the cellar, the Stilton lay quietly on its shelf, looking as fast asleep as only a cheese can do.
The wizard scratched his head. Had he imagined the tapping? No, there it was again. Sounding louder, sounding really frantic. But it wasn’t in his cellar, it was in the cellar next door. Which was very strange . . . Because the shop next door belonged to the furrier, Mr Knacksap, who had gone away to get ready for his wedding to Heckie. Mr Knacksap’s shop should have been empty.
Another burst of tapping . . . Mr Gurgle went up to the dividing wall and tapped in turn, and the tapping became louder. Something or someone was trapped in there. The wizard slipped on his coat and went outside. The front of the furrier’s shop was locked – the back too. But there was a grating across the top of the cellar steps, out in the back yard. He fetched a stepladder and climbed over the wall, wobbling a little, for he was holding a torch in one hand.
The grating was ancient and rusty, but though Mr Gurgle was weedy, he was also obstinate. He tugged and he tugged and at last it came away and he could make his way carefully down the cellar steps.
At the bottom, curled in a heap, lay a boy. Blood had hardened on his forehead and his face; there was more blood on his hands where he had pounded the rough stone wall.
It was only when he tried to speak, muttering words that made no sense at all, that the wizard recognized Daniel.
Everyone had been worried about Heckie’s engagement to the furrier, but as the day of the wedding grew closer, Daniel became quite frantic. Though he knew that Heckie was a powerful witch, he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that some frightful harm would come to her through Mr Knacksap.
He had bought Heckie a present: a tea-making machine which dropped exactly the right number of bags into the pot. He was actually wrapping it up when he decided not to go to the party. Instead, he made his way to the furrier’s shop in Market Square. Perhaps even now he could still get proof of the furrier’s treachery.
Over the FOR SALE notice, another notice had been plastered, saying SOLD. The beaver cape had been taken from the window. But, to Daniel’s surprise, the door of the shop was ajar. Mr Knacksap’s cleaning lady, in a very nasty temper, was just leaving.
‘If you want him, you’d better come in and wait,’ she said. ‘I’m not hanging around any longer. If he doesn’t want to give me a bit of a farewell tip like any decent gentleman would, then good riddance to him.’
She left, and Daniel slipped in to the furrier’s office. It was stripped and bare. Beside the desk stood three leather suitcases with gaudy labels.
L. KNACKSAP, HOTEL SPLENDISSIMA, ALICANTE, SPAIN, read Daniel.
Spain? Why Spain? thought Daniel. Surely it was beside Lake Windermere that the furrier was going to marry Heckie?
At that moment he heard the sound of a key turning in the lock. Mr Knacksap coming back for his luggage! There was a cupboard in the corner for coats and overalls. Daniel slipped inside, his heart pounding, and closed the door.
Mr Knacksap was whistling jauntily as he sat down at his desk. Then he picked up the telephone. ‘Flitchbody? It’s Knacksap here. I just wanted to make sure you’ve got everything sorted. The bodies should be with you by six this morning. Three hundred snow leopards. They’ll be dead and without a scratch on them – we’re going to use gas. All you’ve got to do is get them skinned.’
‘Where are you going to gas them for heaven’s sake?’
‘Hankley Hall – it’s about five miles from Wellbridge. Don’t worry, it’s a doddle.’
‘I still don’t know where you think you can get them from.’
‘Well, if I told you I’d found a witch who can turn people into leopards, you wouldn’t believe me. So just take it I’ve found someone who breeds them in secret and thinks I’m going to let them loose on the hills. And remember, Flitchbody, I want the money in cash or I’ll blow the lot to kingdom come.’
He put down the phone.
Oh, God, thought Daniel. What does it mean? What shall I do?
Then something awful happened. His foot slipped and bumped against one of Mr Knacksap’s walking sticks, propped in the corner of the cupboard. Daniel lunged, trying desperately to catch it – and missed. There was a frightful clatter. Then slowly . . . very slowly . . . the cupboard was opened by an unseen hand.
Heckie pulled the dragworm through the lamplit streets of Wellbridge, past Sumi’s shop, past Boris’s garage. Everything was shuttered; everyone slept. It was a long way to Fetlington, but the night was fresh and cool.
She was turning into Market Square when she saw, coming towards her, a furniture lorry which stopped suddenly with a squeal of brakes. Then a dumpy lady in a boiler suit got down from the cab.
It couldn’t be . . . But it was!
‘Dora!’ said Heckie – and waited for her friend to snub her and turn away.
‘Heckie!’ said Dora – and waited for her friend to shout rude things at her.
There was a pause while both witches looked at each other. Then:
‘Oh, Dora, I have missed you,’ said Heckie.
‘Oh, Heckie, I have missed you,’ said Dora.
And then they were hugging each other and talking both at once, explaining how miserable they had been and promising that they would never, never quarrel with each other again.
All this took a little while, but then Heckie said: ‘Why are you moving furniture at this time of night?’
‘Well, actually . . . I was coming to see you. I was going to have a last try at being friends and I wanted to ask you if you’d take my wardrobe. It’s haunted, you see, and I’m getting married and my fiancé doesn’t like ghosts.’
‘But of course I’ll take it. Only it’s so funny, Dora, because I was coming to see you! I wanted to have a last try at being friends and I wanted to ask you if you’d take my familiar because I’m getting married and my fiancé doesn’t like dragworms!’
So then they both laughed so much they nearly fell over and said wasn’t it amazing that both of them were going to get married, and then Dora opened the wardrobe and the thing came out looking white and vague and blinking worriedly – and as Dora had known she would, Heckie took to it at once.
And then Heckie unzipped the dragworm’s basket and of course it was love at first sight. ‘Oh, Heckie, you were always so clever with animals! The way the back of him is so different from the front and yet somehow he’s all of a piece!’
So now their worries were over and they could settle down to a good gossip.
‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could visit each other every week like proper married ladies?’ said Heckie.
‘Oh, wouldn’t it!’ said Dora. ‘But I’m going to live in the Lake District.’
Heckie gave a shriek of delight. ‘But so am I! So am I going to live in the Lake District! Isn’t it absolutely splendid! We’ll be able to swap recipes and have tupperware parties and—’
She never finished her sentence. The door of the cheese wizard’s shop burst open and Mr Gurgle came running across the square, still in his bedroom slippers, and as white as a sheet.
‘Thank goodness!’ he said, grabbing Heckie’s arm. ‘I thought I heard you. It’s the boy . . . Daniel. I found him trussed up in Knacksap’s cellar. He’s been hit on the head and he’s got brain fever, I think. He keeps talking about leopards. Three hundred snow leopards going to be gassed at Hankley Hall!’
Daniel lay on Mr Gurgle’s sofa. He had lost so much blood that the room was going round and round, but when he saw Heckie, he made a desperate effort to speak.
‘Leopards,’ he said again. ‘Three hundred . . . at Hankley Hall . . . killed.’ And struggling to make her understand what he had heard: ‘Flitchbody . . .’ he began – and then fell back against the cushions.
Heckie felt his head with careful fingers. ‘He must go to hospital at once and his parents be told. Get an ambulance, Gurgle. When he’s
safe you can rally the others, but the boy comes first.’ She turned to Dora. ‘I did it,’ said Heckie, and she looked like a corpse. ‘I made the leopards out of the prisoners, for Li-Li to turn loose on the hills. This Flitchbody must have got wind of Li-Li’s plans and kidnapped them!’
‘Oh, but that’s terrible, Heckie. You see one of them must be Lewis’s Cousin Alfred! He went to the prison to free him. Lewis will never forgive me if Cousin Alfred gets gassed and skinned.’
‘Perhaps it’s not too late,’ said Heckie – and both witches ran like the wind for the lorry.
Chapter Twenty-One
It had been a splendid place once – a long, low building with towers and turrets and an avenue of lime trees. There was a statue garden with queer griffins and heraldic beasts carved in stone, and a lake and a maze – a really frightening maze, the kind with high yew hedges that could trap you for hours and hours.
But now the hall was empty and partly ruined. The people who owned Hankley couldn’t afford to keep it up and then it was found that an underground river was making the back of the house sink into the ground, so nobody would buy it.
The ballroom, though, was in the front and it looked almost as it had done a hundred years ago. There were patches of damp on the ceiling and the plaster had flaked off, but the beautiful floor was still there, and the carved gallery. And now, with candles flickering in the holders and graceful shadows moving across the windows, it might have seemed as though the grand people who had danced there had come back to haunt the place in which they had once been happy.
But the creatures who moved between the pillars wore no ball gowns and carried no fans – and when they turned and wove their patterns on the floor, it was on four legs, not on two.
The leopards had been quiet when Heckie made them, but now it was different. The men who brought them had handled them roughly, prodding and poking with long-handled forks to send them faster down the wire tunnels and into the room. The big cats had smelled the fear in the men; their eyes glinted and they lashed each other with their tails.