by B G Denvil
I apologise meekly and humbly, but I loved that idea. “Get a cow to stamp on her fingers while she’s asleep. When she conjures up some of that disgraceful cooking she used to offer us, we can turn it into an even worse sludge. And it will give her dreadful indigestion. Occasional headaches, cramps, and dizzy spells.” I was getting quite imaginative and certainly enjoying myself, when Edna said something I liked even more.
“We can frighten her. More than mild mishaps, we can send monsters and threats of a terrible end.”
Twelve
When the first spots of the dreadful plague appeared across my chest, shoulders and neck, I shivered, looked away and felt such deep sympathy for those who had the real sickness, and immediately get the terrible pain followed after a few days by death in agony.
I had been warned this would come; I had been assured it was just a mock attack from that horrible woman I had once called mother, yet it still made me nauseous and it still frightened me, just in case it was the real thing. No pain, of course, so no panic.
I tossed my head, told myself not to be a complete idiot and then regarded it with mild curiosity, clicked my fingers and sent it away.
I wished I could do the same to everyone else who genuinely had this. But my magic would have to be a whole lot stronger for that.
I did not have the plague, and trotted around the entire premises, both houses of The Rookery, assuring everybody these were scare-tactics, and to take no notice. I clicked away all of it.
The buboes came the next day. What vile things they were. But more clicking of fingers with no pain or fear.
Then I sent the same back to her. She could think it was her own magic back sliding, but she might spend the first day in genuine fear of the whole thing being horribly real.
But two days later when Angdar came to see me, I was absolutely confused again.
He was scratching his rash, though not real, of course. He sat down close beside me and kept his voice very low. I was used to Angdar dancing and laughing, so I was disappointed to see him miserable and muttering.
“How can I help you?” The usual start to conversations these days.
“It’s Butterfield,” he said softly.
“Don’t tell me she’s got the plague?” I laughed.
“She says she loves me,” he said without a smile. “And I love her. I do. I really do.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said, and I meant it. “What’s wrong with that?”
He blushed slightly, which I really wasn’t expecting. That rough blond skin, so beaten by weather, by salt and by wind, just didn’t look sensible with a flush of embarrassment. “She’s magic,” he mumbled. “A witch.”
I knew this might be difficult for an average man to accept, but Angdar wasn’t an average man. And after all, he’d known from the very first moment he met her, and he knew I was too. Why was he cuddled up to me now, if witches were scary after all? “If we hadn’t all been wizards and witches,” I pointed out, “you wouldn’t be here with a magic axe in your bed.”
“Oh yes,” he brushed that aside. “But I never felt – anything – like love – before. Not in my whole life. Maybe for the sea. You know. But not a woman. Is it – could it be – you know what I mean?”
Now I knew exactly what he meant. The magical possibilities had him in knots. “Why think of that now?” I asked him.
“It started when I was away,” he said. “So wretched I was, thinking I might never see her again. And I knew then, quite suddenly, it was love. And you brought me back, and I was so happy and so was my Butterfield. And then this morning, rushing off to meet her in the dining room, it occurred to me. I’d never thought myself capable of feeling like this. So strong. It rules my life. And I know I’m not alive, but that’s just too complicated. An amazing feeling. I wondered – if I was capable even now. Was it real? Is it real?”
“You mean, has Butterfield put you under a spell, and you’re trapped?”
“Well – yes.”
“Would a nice person do that?” I asked him.
He shook his russet tangles. “No. And she’s too wonderful ever to do that. But does she make me think she’s too wonderful?”
“Typical man,” I sighed. “Can’t even trust himself being in love. And automatically blames the woman.”
He shook his head again. “No. But yes. And no.”
“Maybe you had to die in order to be capable of loving anyone,” I said. “Shocking revelation. You think you could never genuinely love anyone? And you’re only capable of good feelings if you’re bewitched?”
He gulped. “No. Not really.”
“And you distrust the woman you love?”
“Not. Not that either.”
“Look,” I said, “she was devastated when you were whisked away. She made me lift that entire house up into the air, so she could look at your grave site again and make sure you weren’t buried back inside.”
“What? How do you hold up a house?” he asked, staring at me as if I was quite mad. I probably was of course.
“Magic. Not hands,” I said. “But we had to get the entire twenty or more occupants of both houses, and we all used our magic together – you know – one, two, three, up we go! It took a lot of effort; I can tell you. Eventually the house rose up into the air over our heads, and Butterfield rushed down to inspect the foundations where your grave had been found. She actually risked – genuinely risked – the entire house crashing down on her. Once she crawled out, disappointed because she hadn’t found you, we let the house float back down, complete with drips of mud and trails of weed. Then she went and sat on the grass and cried.”
“Really?”
I thought he was just about crying himself now. “Exactly,” I answered. “And it was she who inspired me to try going back in time to get you. And you saw how she looked when I brought you back to her.”
He had certainly seen. “It’s true? She actually loves me too?”
“Didn’t you think anyone possibly could?”
“Well – no.”
Now I really did laugh at him. “I absolutely promise you,” I promised him, “Butterfield is much too lovely and sweet and kind to ever put a spell on you - ever. Besides, she adores you, honestly, she does. She’d want to get real love back, wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t want fake love from a spell.”
He nodded about ten times and thanked me and shuffled off. I knew it would take him a little while to convince himself someone that special could actually want him. Clearly he had never got on with his brother, and never spoke of a wife.
It was after supper that I managed to get Butterfield alone for a few moments, and told her the general outline of the story. I didn’t tell the whole story, of course. She would have been extremely hurt to know her beloved Angdar had distrusted her to that extent. I only told her half the story, but that was enough. “Marry him,” I suggested.
“You really think so?” She was suddenly shy. “And – well – what if he disappears again?”
“We’ll try and find him again.” I scratched absently, beneath my arm where the last magic buboe had made its ridiculous but stubborn appearance. It reminded me. “And do help him get rid of that false rash. Then drag him off and tell him he has to marry you.”
She giggled and went off to find him.
I had a sudden, very tiny thought. Would it really be fun to fall in love with someone? Would it be as fantastic and glorious and incredible as Angdar seemed to think? But immediately I banished the thought. Not for me.
The next morning, I went back to church. Not a normal habit for a witch, but I wanted to see if I could wake Rollo up, and show everyone he wasn’t dead. As I stepped into the church and walked towards the pulpit, I saw someone sitting beside the corpse.
“Hello, Godwin,” I said.
He looked up in amazement. “I’m really here?” he muttered.
“Looks like it.” I smiled, although I hated what I’d ever heard about this man. But clearly he was entirely confu
sed. “Are you a ghost?”
“Am I?” He actually pinched himself. “But look – I’m solid.”
First Angdar and now this idiot. Humans!
“Do you remember being killed?” I asked. It seemed a sensible question at the time. “Have you any memories at all? Where did you live before you died? Were you married? If you did die, when was it? Who killed you? Where? And how? If you were dead, where did you go? And if you weren’t killed at all, where were you for those months?”
Rollo lay unmoved, looking exactly as he had when I first saw him supposedly dead, but no one had got him prepared for burial. Just as well, since I was sure he was still alive.
Godwin was searching for answers. Presumably he couldn’t remember everything I’d asked him, but surely he remembered something.
Then he shook his head. “Don’t know,” he muttered. And then surprised me again. “What’s me name?” he asked.
Now that was going to be a problem. “Oh, botheration,” I complained. “Not only humans – but dead humans!” It seems they’re all as daft as baby goats when alive, and then as daft as baby donkeys when dead.
Godwin pointed down at Rollo’s body beside him. “And I reckon I know this fellow. But is he dead? Or just tired?”
I had to start from the beginning. I could now wager it was Alice all along. “Listen,” I said to Godwin, “There is some very naughty magic going on around here. You lived down the road, where there’s a cottage on one corner, and a farm on the other. You’re Godwin Trout, and the farmer is Alid Bank. Here is Rollo, and I don’t think he’s dead, but I’m not sure. You do know him because you and he both went to the tavern rather too often. And I’m not sure if you’re dead either.” I carefully didn’t mention his wife. But he just stared anyway.
Trying not to be too critical, after all I must sound a bit daft too if I wasn’t sure whether he was dead or not, but I wanted to concentrate on Rollo, so I told Godwin to sit and wait.
“But if I’m dead,” he said, “what am I waiting for?”
A very stupid thought was coming to mind. And I was trying to block my own temptations. Bring these two idiots back to The Rookery? I’d be hated. Would anyone ever forgive me? But I was quite sure I wasn’t going to sit in this church all day and night. My magic just didn’t merge properly with churches, even though this one definitely smelled nice. And I’d quite liked Father George when I’d met him at Magg’s wedding.
But that stopped me even more abruptly – one hand in the air. Did I seriously want to take Magg’s previous abusive husband to the place she now lived with her new happy man, to what – bring them face to face and more or less asking outright for absolute chaos. And even if Godwin was a ghost, did anyone seriously expect to have a happy marriage with a past abusive husband floating around?
With considerable reluctance, I held my hands over Rollo’s body, and my deepest knowledge pronounced him alive. So fine – I could take him back.
It was the other one who was the difficulty. I held my hands over his head for some moments. Godwin twitched a couple of times, but tried to sit still, even though he had no understanding of what I was doing. Once I got my answer, I decided I still didn’t know what I was doing either.
Nothing made sense. Oh well, perhaps Rollo did, but if I waited any longer, he would end up the same as Godwin.
The facts were frankly as weird to me as they were to Piddleton’s brightest, whomever they were. Because, as clear as I could make it, neither Godwin nor Rollo were entirely dead, nor entirely alive, and stuck in her cow barn out on the Bank farm, Alice was working on Rollo to fix him further than half way. Did my wretched mother actually think any of this would break my heart?
I looked at both blank faces beside me of these half dead men, and felt so angry, I send a whizz of a secret spell straight to Alice. She would sneeze twenty-six times, both her feet would itch violently, and she would trip over a piglet, hurt her toes, infuriate the piglet’s mother who would headbutt her right in the middle and then she would fall over backwards right into a cow pat. Then I breathed deeply, silently satisfied.
Thirteen
Not wanting to risk flight, I asked Godwin if he felt capable of walking all the way to The Rookery, carrying Rollo’s inert weight between us.
He looked confused, but then, he’d looked like that for the last half hour, so off we marched. I knew I’d be greeted by angry astonishment, but I had to do what I had to do, and kept walking, Godwin following, and Rollo totally inert on our shoulders.
No sun, but at least no rain, no snow, not even wind, so it didn’t take us all that long. I just hoped and hoped it wouldn’t be Maggs who met us first.
Godwin, of course, virtually witless in his state, was simply shuffling along doing as he was told. I told him to keep his head down, and he did it without having the slightest idea why. Three idiots together, we hurried into my new Rookery cottage, I opened the first door on the second storey, and we dropped Rollo on the bed, while I hurriedly locked the door.
Safe.
With a brief smile imagining what I’d sent to Alice, I now concentrated on the humans. I pointed to the long, cushioned settle. “Lie down there,” I told Godwin. “And go to sleep. Stay there until I get back.”
I then flew off to find Edna and Peg. But the first person I bumped into was Bertie, with Sym keeping close behind. I’d almost forgotten what I’d asked him to do.
Evidently with Sym on foot, and Bertie flying, they had both checked every village within the district, even going as far as Salisbury, checking on the state of the plague. It was basically good news. Well, there had to be good news sometimes.
With so few rats around, and a complete lack of fleas, that disgusting disease has already faded.
“I saw lots of dead bodies,” muttered Sym. “I didn’t like it. But folks had started cleaning up. Lots of burial pits. I didn’t want to stay, but it seems like it’s over.”
Yes, good news at last. This was such a relief, and meant that in a day or two I could take down the wall and release the over fed rats.
And in the meantime – “Bertie,” I said, “I have a problem. If someone is half dead and half alive, which one do you choose to finish the job?”
“To kill or cure?”
I didn’t like that way of putting it, but it was true enough. That meant Godwin would have to come fully back to life. Oh blast. I found Edna sitting on my doorstep waiting for me, and Peg was in her own room trying to invent a monster to annoy Alice. I begged them both to come and help me, though didn’t yet admit what I’d done. When I led them into the double room in the new building and they saw the semi-dead Rollo and the semi-alive Godwin, they stared open-mouthed, and then turned to stare at me.
“Alright, we knew you were crackers,” Edna squeaked, “but this is dreadfully difficult to understand, my dear. You bring one tediously uninteresting dead human, and one vile abusive dead human, whose widow has married one of our own wizards, and will be terrified to see her dead husband come back to beat her again, and she’ll a criminal bigamist.”
I flopped. Life could be quite exhausting.
“It was all Alice,” I tried to explain. “All that original confusion we kept hearing about Godwin, and who killed him and where and how –it’s all rubbish. Because Alice invented the whole thing. With her magic empowered now, and her nastiness growing too, she can do these things. Poor Maggs married again, but Godwin was never dead. Now Alice is doing the same thing to Rollo. He’s lying there unconscious, but he’s not dead. Alice thinks all this is hurting me. Well, I suppose in a way it is, but it’ll hurt Maggs and Mandrake the most.”
“I’m getting the silver cup and spoon,” said Peg at once. “And if I see Whistle, I’ll grab him too.” And she promptly flew from the window down towards my rooms.
Meanwhile I took Edna over to see the two dead and alive young men. “I’m beginning to understand,” she said. “Is poor Maggs unknowingly bigamous?”
“Yes,” I mumbled, “
unless she kills him off.”
“Or changes his identity.”
Now that surprised me. “How? And what about convincing everyone else in the village? A lost twin?”
“Change his face,” suggested Edna without the slightest hint of humour. “Make him look different, wipe away his memory of Maggs, and set him up to start a new life.”
As usual, it was the daft ideas I really liked. “Yes, you’re right, if we can achieve it,” I grinned. “Once we get the silver trio here, we can start having fun. Shall we make him wonderfully handsome? Horribly ugly? Or what about making him a fox or a badger? Any chance of turning him nice?”
“After this confusing nightmare, I’m sure he’ll learn a few lessons, and that should be enough,” Edna said. “He’s human, after all. He’ll never end up wonderful.”
With a windblown top end and a muddy bottom end, Peg blew back in with the three silver items we could start with. Sadly, she’d brought no jug of wine, so I conjured that up myself and passed the cups around. “Cheers.” I raised my cup. “We’re about to do something very unethical. Don’t tell the others. Especially Maggs and Mandrake.”
There were still some beautiful colours clustering on our trees outside, except for the unchanging yew and the stubborn pines, but now nearing the end of November, many leaves had left us with a forlorn wave, and a few quite naked branches told us that winter was close. The weather had been foul. The wind was especially turbulent, but none of our windows rattled, none of the doors blew on their frames, and it was not too often half our thatch flew off.
Inside, however, it was warm, it was cosy, and it was even delightfully quiet. The wind could not thrust its business into the rooms I had built. Now, hoping to make the next few hours more cheerful, I lit the fire. Flames crackled and danced and did their best pretending to be real.
I set up the silver toadstool, spoon and cup, and a large earthenware jug of water. Then we began. Happily invigorated by the last drink of water, I asked the cup a number of questions which weren’t particularly urgent, but it all helped. “Is my plan to bring both these men back to life, the right choice?” Well, of course it was. What did I expect the cup to say?