The Witch of Clatteringshaws

by Joan Aiken

  You say that you have this problem about the King. (I feel sorry for him too; he sounds as if he is having a hard time). You ask about descendants of Brutus of Troy born in Follodden year. My dear friend, I must point out that even in this small town there are at least thirty children, male and female, born in that year. Is that the only pointer you can provide? There is a large rock near here, carved with the figure of a giant boar, and beside it a human foot; these relics are supposed to be connected with the coronation ceremonies of the Ancient Kings of Lerryn in 1108 B.C. A local belief has it that if a descendant of the Ancient Kings passes that way, there will be a loud clap of thunder. But do you seriously suggest that I gather together thirty schoolchildren and take them on a picnic to the Crag of Lerryn on a day when it is likely to thunder? Half of them would fall into the ravine.

  The Hobyahs are still active, and when the loch froze in January, they raided this side on several occasions. The golf course was not safe after four p.m.

  My friend has not been seen in public for two years; he is being dismissed as a myth, something like the Red Etin. Mothers use him to threaten their children—“Hush ye, hush ye, dinna fret ye, or the Loch Grieve Monster will get ye!”

  Something odd is taking place in the graveyard. More of that in my next. Fancy having a proper address for you! Lambeth Palace, ho ho ho!

  (Do you remember old Wiggonholt? I wonder what ever became of him? And of Cousin Rodney?)

  You say that you are sending two investigators northward. You had better give me more information about them or they are likely to run into trouble.

  Cousinly greetings,

  M

  Dido and the Woodlouse sat in a first-class compartment of a train that was making its way over the heights of Willoughby Wold.

  Dido looked at the Woodlouse with huge satisfaction. His real name was not the Woodlouse but Piers Ivanhoe le Guichet Crackenthorpe. But he had been called Woodlouse when she first met him because of his habit of curling up in moments of danger, and she had become fond of the name. It seemed to suit him. He was a thin, pale, dark-haired boy somewhere in his early teens. He wore green-tinted glasses. He was nothing like so thin and pale as he had been when Dido first met him at a school run by criminals and werewolves, where he had been starved and ill-treated.

  Now, for some months, he had been the guest of the Green family at Willoughby Chase, where two kind girls, Bonnie and Sylvia, and their benevolent parents, Sir Willoughby and Lady Green, had fed and tended and encouraged him, until he was now as active and cheerful as any other boy his age.

  “Woodlouse,” said Dido, “you’re a credit to those Greens. I only wish we could a stayed longer. They seemed a right decent pair of gals, that Bonnie and Sylvia. A few more days of crossbow practice and I reckon you’d be all set to win the county championship.”

  “Well, they did say to come back when we’d finished our errand in the North Country. Bonnie promised that she’d teach me singlestick and quarterstaff and how to tilt at the quintain. And Sylvia was going to teach me to skate. Sir Willoughby promised he’d write to my pater, who’s the British ambassador in New Galloway, the capital of Hy Brasil, to tell him that I was alive and bobbish. I’d really like to go out and visit the pater and mater, but it’s a three-month trip. And they might just be coming back.”

  Piers sighed and looked out at the wild and desolate moorland country through which the train was passing.

  “How long before we get to Caledonia?”

  “Four hours—maybe five. Depends a bit, Sir Willoughby said, on whether we meet any highwaymen along the way. Railwaymen they call them in these parts. Then we get to Roman Wall. There’s a train station, but we don’t get out. We go on, through a lot of mountains, and come to a big lake, what they call a loch. There’s been a new rail bridge built across it. Just as well, Sir Willoughby said, as there’s a monster living in or near the loch, the Loch Grieve Monster, what used to nobble a lot of folks off the ferry, afore the bridge was built. And there are Hobyahs too. The town we’re going to, Clatteringshaws, is on the north side of the loch.”

  “Is that where Father Sam’s cousin lives?”

  “I’m not sure,” Dido admitted. “Father Sam didn’t seem to know. But that’s the town she’s witch of.”

  “Seems mighty odd—for an Archbishop’s cousin to be a witch. I never met a witch, did you, Dido?”

  “Well,” said Dido, “when I was in New Cumbria, that’s next to Hy Brasil, there were some mighty rummy old gals there. If they weren’t witches, they was the next best thing. One of ’em turned into an owl and flew about at night. And she got shot and turned back into herself again. But dead.”

  “Shot when she was an owl?”

  “Yup. And the Queen of that country was a right spooky old crumpet what had been waiting umpty hundred years for her hubby to come back; and to keep herself going all that time she ate a lot of gals’ bones.… I reckon you could call her a witch.”

  Piers looked thoughtful.

  “Monsters, Hobyahs, witches—it sounds like an odd spot we’re heading for. What are Hobyahs?”

  “I don’t rightly know. But they ain’t things you’d want to give the time of day to, that’s for sure. Oh, well—how about a spot of grub?”

  “I’m agreeable.”

  But before they could sample the contents of the lavish picnic hamper provided by the Green family, the train came to a sudden grinding halt.

  “Hey!” said Dido, putting her head out of the window, “how come we stopped in the middle of nobody’s land?”

  Outside there was nothing to be seen but wild rocky moorland with mountains ahead in the distance.

  Toward the front of the train they could hear shouts and musket shots.

  “Sounds to me like a holdup. Best get out our pistols, Woodlouse.”

  The Green family had provided Dido and Piers with these essentials for travel in the North country. Dido withdrew hers from an outside pocket in her knapsack and cocked it, leaning out of the window again and looking toward the front of the train.

  “Well, there’s a bit of fussation going on up there, but seems like our help won’t be wanted this time—the robbers seem to be making off.”

  Two figures on horseback were visible galloping away into the mist.

  “Fat fellows,” said Dido. “Don’t seem as if they’d need to rob a train—neither of ’em looked as if they’d ever gone hungry … Funny thing, they looked a bit like two coves I used to see about at Saint Jim’s Palace, a couple of those unCivil Servants.”

  After a few jolts and jiggles the train resumed its journey. Presently Piers and Dido heard steps coming along the corridor. A figure halted outside the door of their compartment and tapped on the glass inquiringly. Dido nodded for her to come in.

  “Guess she looks harmless enough, eh, Woodlouse?”

  “I should think so,” Piers agreed. Though harmless was not quite the word he would have chosen to describe the woman who entered their carriage.

  She might have been anywhere between thirty and fifty, though she moved with the balance and easy stride of a much younger person. Her hair, done in a knot at the back of her neck, was black and smooth. Her long thin face had regular features and would have been handsome, but there was something a little forbidding about it. She looks, thought Dido, as if she could have a mighty nasty temper if she was crossed. Her eyes were seaweed colored. She wore a red dress.

  She’d stick a spike in you as soon as look at you, thought Dido.

  Her voice, when she spoke, was rather harsh, but evidently her intentions were friendly.

  “Just checking to see that you were not upset by the unscheduled stop,” she said.

  “Are you a rail inspector?” said Dido.

  “Affiliated,” the woman answered absently. “Aldith Ironside—in charge of internal communications and maintenance. Are you traveling far?”

  “To Clatteringshaws,” said Piers. Dido threw him a warning look. No need to pass out in
formation to strangers, that was her motto. Though what harm could this woman do them?

  “That holdup seemed right puny,” Dido said. “Just two o’ them, was there? And they expected to rob a whole train?”

  “A bit of grapeshot soon frightened them off,” said Aldith Ironside. Her eye fell on the open hamper. “Just about to have a bite to eat, were you? It’ll be safe enough now.…”

  “Would you fancy a roll or a chicken leg?” said Piers, unaware of Dido’s scowl.

  “Thank you. That would be most acceptable,” said the woman, and sat down by Piers. “And a glass of wine if you can spare it.”

  “Of course we can—can’t we, Dido?”

  Dido nodded. She was studying the ring on Aldith’s right hand. It was a signet—gold and jet, a thick, heavy ring. She wondered where she had seen it before—or one just like it.

  The woman was talking about robberies on this line.

  “There have been a lot—ever since they raised that Spanish ship off the seabed on Gombeen Sands—they found an emerald in her hold as big as a rook’s egg—seventy-seven carats, worth half a million.… Now everybody going or coming this way is thought to be carrying precious stones.”

  “Oh?” said Dido. “Where is Gombeen Sands?”

  “Out beyond the mouth of Loch Grieve. There’s a whirlpool at the mouth of the loch when the tide is rising. Any ship not acquainted with the currents thereabouts is likely to be caught in the whirl, and then—anything up to a year later—the remains of the ship are washed up on the sands.”

  “Fine pickings for beachcombers,” said Dido.

  “Yes, but they have to watch their footing on the sands—some of them are quicksands.”

  “So who does the emerald belong to?” Dido asked.

  “Oh—probably to the Crown,” the woman said vaguely. “Now tell me—shall you stay long at Clatteringshaws?”

  “Can’t really tell about that.” Forestalling Piers, Dido echoed the woman’s vague tone. “We might have a great-aunt living up in those parts—have to see if we can find her. Is it a big place? Do you live there?”

  “No, hardly more than a village.” Dido noticed that the woman failed to answer her second question. Next minute she stood up.

  “Here’s where I leave you—Roman Wall. Thanks for your company—and the chicken leg.”

  She picked up the cane she had been carrying.

  Only, Dido noticed, it was not a cane but a golf club.

  Station signs saying ROMAN WALL were moving slowly past the windows. Then the train drew to a stop. The small station building, Dido noticed, was built of massive granite blocks.

  A melodious female voice chanted: “The train now approaching platform one is for Clatteringshaws. Clatteringshaws only. There it will terminate. Look out for the platform before you alight. Please be sure that you have all your baggage. At Clatteringshaws this train will terminate.”

  Dido chuckled. The announcer chanting her message recalled an old song of Dido’s father’s, which went, “I love you in the springtime and I love you in the fall,/To love you is my fate./But shall we ever meet?/For here my train will terminate.…”

  It had really been a sonata for hoboy and bassinet, but when she was younger Dido had set those words to it, and now, whenever she heard the tune, they always came to mind.

  She sang them without thinking as she opened the carriage door for Aldith Ironside.

  The woman stopped as if she had been stung by a wasp, and swung round.

  “That tune!” she whispered. “What was it?”

  “Just an old song of my father’s—”

  Dido was embarrassed. In her opinion Abednego Twite was best forgotten—he had been a plotter, a swindler, bent as a paper clip, slippery as a salamander, and had behaved to all his family with heartless indifference.

  The only good thing about him was the tunes he made up.

  “A tune of your father’s? When? Who was he?”

  “Ten—twelve years ago—maybe more. I dunno.”

  Dido was puzzled. What could have put the woman into such a fuss? But now the announcer was chanting, “Close the doors, please. Mind the gap. Close the doors,” and the train let out a wail and a huge hiss of steam and started to move.

  The woman, looking utterly frustrated, was left standing on the station platform clutching her golf club.

  Was that all the luggage she had?

  I do wonder who has a ring like that? Dido thought, and she began to tidy up the picnic things.

  FIVE

  Snow was falling when Dido and Piers left the train at the stop for Clatteringshaws.

  “Och, ’tis only the spring florrish,” said the stationmaster, who received their tickets.

  “Can we get a cab to take us to the town?” said Dido through chattering teeth. She glanced up and down the twilit platform. Very few passengers seemed to have got out.

  “Fergie McDune will take ye, time he’s dropped off the Mayor.”

  “How long will that take him?”

  “Nae mair than half an hour. Ye could walk into town, of course.”

  “How long would that take?”

  “An hour and a bittock,” said the stationmaster, looking at their knapsacks. (They had left the empty picnic hamper in the train; all the food had been eaten, and the plates and forks were heavy.)

  “Juist mak’ yerselves at hame,” said the man hospitably. “I’ll be locking up, whiles.”

  He locked every door in the small building. “There’s a fine wee bench out yonder against the fence. I’m off hame the noo.” And he walked away over a heathery slope.

  “It’s cold up here,” said the Woodlouse. The station was on a hilltop. Far below them glimmered the dark water of the loch, which they had just crossed on a bridge that seemed to go on for miles and was slung high above the water from one hill summit to another. A few lights down near the water’s edge were presumably the town of Clatteringshaws. Their train had retreated the same way it had come, and the empty countryside was silent, except for the chuntering of some night bird.

  “I reckon Father Sam wasn’t wrong when he said Scotland was a big empty place,” said Dido, shivering.

  “Should make it easier to find one king in it.”

  “Hark. What’s that creaking noise?”

  “The train coming back?”

  “No—sounds like the lid on a pot of boiling water—there!”

  The sound came nearer, came quite close, then faded again.

  “Now it’s getting louder—”

  “Blest if it’s not right above us!”

  The sky was cloudy and dim. When they looked up, snow peppered their faces.

  “There—see!”

  “What was it?”

  “Looked like a big three-legged bird?”

  “That was no bird. It was as big as a stag.”

  “They don’t have flying stags. Specially three-legged ones.”

  “How could you possibly tell that it was three-legged?”

  At this moment Fergie McDune came back, driving his gig.

  “Ye’ll be for the town?”

  “Yes, please. Someplace where we can get a bed for the night.”

  “Ah, that’ll be Lachie Mackintosh, the Monster’s Arms.”

  McDune cracked his whip and they set off down the hill.

  “That’s a funny name for an inn—the Monster’s Arms?” suggested Piers.

  “Why? Would you have him call it the Monster’s Legs?”

  “Do you have many monsters round here?”

  “Ilka land has its ain lauch,” said Fergie, which response so perplexed his customers that they kept silent for the rest of the drive.

  Clatteringshaws seemed a larger town than they had expected, with a wide main street and gaunt, high buildings, but it was a very silent place, with no one about in the street and few lights in the curtained windows. The main street led directly to the lochside, where the Monster’s Arms, a fair-sized timber-framed inn, stood beside t
he boat jetty.

  To their great relief the inn promised them beds for the night, and provided a welcome dinner of calf’s-head ragout, bullock’s tongue, and potato cakes.

  It had been a long day, and Dido and Piers were glad to retire, as soon as they had eaten the last lump of potato cake, to beds that proved to be equally lumpy, and so damp that Dido wondered if hers had been dipped in the loch to expel bugs.

  Halfway through a restless night spent trying to find an island in the mattress-swamp, she remembered where she had seen a ring like that of the woman on the train.

  It was on the finger of Father Sam.

  Is that the same ring, or is there someplace where they sell them, like those painted mugs that say “A Present from the Tower of London”? Dido wondered, wriggling in an effort to find a dry spot in her bed. Could that woman have been Father Sam’s cousin? What was she doing on the train?

  At last Dido fell asleep.

  In the morning they were given bowls of gray glue for breakfast.

  “ ’Tis parritch,” said the whiskered waiter who served them. “Forbye ye should eat it standing up.”

  “I’m not sure as I want to eat it at all,” said Dido. “But why standing up?”

  “ ’Tis a token of respect.”

  “I’d sooner respect a dish of bacon and eggs.”

  “Och, ye’ll no’ get that this morn.”

  “Why not?”

  “ ’Tis Saint Vinnipag’s Day. He was a vegetarian. Out yonder,” said the waiter, nodding his white head toward the window, through which a vista of misty loch- and cloud-wrapped mountains could be seen, “out yonder, where the loch runs intae the sea, past the twin whirly-pools of Mindluck and Hartluck, out there lies Inch Meal, the Island of Saints. Twenty thousand and one saints lie buried on yon island,” the waiter told them.

  “My gracious!” said Dido. “You’d hardly think there ud be room for them all. Is it a big island?”

  “Och, no, ye could put it on Clatteringshaws golf course. That island is why we have a saint’s day here in Clatteringshaws on every day of the year.”