The Witch's Daughter

by Nina Bawden

  He brushed the back of his hand across his eyes. Of course it wasn’t true. The child was sharp, as he had said to Annie, she used her wits, that was all. If she seemed strange, sometimes, it was because she was too much alone.

  ‘She should go to school,’ he said, aloud.

  Annie MacLaren looked at him in surprise. ‘I thought you didn’t want her mixing.’

  ‘Well …’ Mr Smith hesitated. There was something he had to tell Annie sometime, he might as well tell her now. Even if she gossiped, which was unlikely, it hardly mattered now he would soon be gone. And he had to go. He had lived on Skua for three years without anyone suspecting he had any particular purpose here. He had been safe, but he was no longer as safe as he had been. The islanders were simple, unsuspicious people, but there were other people not so simple, Mr Smith did not underestimate the police. Once their attention had been drawn to Skua by Mr Jones’s foolish behaviour, they would be curious. They might even be curious about Mr Smith, that quiet, country gentleman living a retired life beside a loch …

  ‘I shall be leaving, Annie,’ Mr Smith said. ‘Quite soon. And when I go, I want you to send her to school.’

  He looked at the old woman. The things that family man, Mr Jones, had said, had pricked his rather sluggish conscience. ‘She should have a proper chance, Annie,’ he said. ‘She’s undersized for her age, she should have more milk and orange juice and she shouldn’t run wild. But school’s the main thing.’ He felt, suddenly, generous and full of sentiment. ‘I’ll see you’re all right, Annie, there’ll be money, don’t worry about that. Just see she gets to school and has a chance to grow up like other children. Not too full of superstitious ideas—not thinking she’s different …’

  *

  ‘Annie says I’m different,’ Perdita said. It was all she would say. She had gone sullen and obstinate with Tim, the way Janey did sometimes, he thought. Girls. They were all the same. Whenever you disagreed with them and tried to put them right, they were inclined to get cross and sulk.

  The swelling in his foot had subsided a little, but it still ached enough to make him feel irritable and moody. He sat deliberately apart and ate sandwiches while Perdita and Janey whispered and giggled together. Perdita was showing Janey something that she was wearing round her neck on a piece of string. She had been wearing it when she found him, he remembered, but he had not noticed it since: perhaps she had tucked it inside the neck of her dress.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, idly interested.

  Perdita turned, pulling away from Janey and clutching her hand across her flat little chest.

  ‘It’s a lucky stone she’s got,’ Janey said.

  ‘Show me,’ he coaxed Perdita, less because he really wanted to see it than because he felt he had been unkind: witches were nonsense, of course, but it had been mean to laugh at her.

  But she shook her head, her mouth pursed and stubborn. ‘T’won’t stay lucky, if I show you.’

  ‘You showed Janey.’

  Perdita frowned. Showing Janey the stone was all right. Mr Jones had talked about showing people: he had said nothing about letting someone feel it.

  Tim edged nearer, a glint in his eye. ‘Please …’ he said, giving her a chance, but when she shook her head again, he laughed and grabbed at her. He had only meant to tease, not to force her to show her secret, but, taken by surprise, she over-balanced and thrust both hands behind her to steady herself.

  Netted like a lobster float, but in thinner string, the lucky stone winked and flashed on her chest. Tim stared at it in wonder. There might be doubt about his ruby, but there was none about this. It was like the central stone in his mother’s engagement ring, but much larger, much brighter …

  Perdita was astonished. She was not used to boys who teased and grabbed her. Alistair Campbell might throw a stone, but he was too scared to lay a finger on her: he would be afraid she might put a spell on him.

  But this boy wasn’t afraid. There was only awestruck wonder in his face as he stared at the stone. ‘It’s a diamond,’ he said in a high, squeaky voice.

  Perdita picked the stone up from her chest and squinted down at it. ‘What’s a diamond?’ she asked.

  ‘What’s a …’

  Tim transferred his gaze to her face, which was innocently enquiring.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ It seemed incredible to him, though of course it wasn’t really: Annie MacLaren had no engagement ring, and so the word had never entered Perdita’s vocabulary.

  ‘Well …’ Tim expelled his breath slowly. ‘A diamond’s a … a … valuable thing. Like emeralds or rubies or gold. It’s … well … treasure …’

  Perdita’s expression remained puzzled.

  Tim sighed. ‘You’ve heard about treasure trove, haven’t you? I mean, you must have read about it in books?’

  ‘She can’t read,’ Janey said.

  ‘Can’t … oh, I see.’ Although this seemed just as extraordinary as not knowing what a diamond was, Tim nodded casually, the way his father did when he had accepted a point in an argument: he thought Perdita must have been terribly shamed by this revelation and he did not want to embarrass her further. After all, it was only babies or very stupid people who couldn’t read …

  He spoke to her slowly, as if she were indeed very stupid.

  ‘Do you know what “valuable” means?’

  ‘Worth a lot of money.’ Perdita touched her stone. ‘Is this worth a lot of money, then?’ She thought a minute, and then smiled. ‘I can give it to Annie for her old age. She’s always worrying about that. She says all she wants is a bit of peace and comfort. Would this be enough to buy her a bit of peace and comfort?’

  ‘I should think so,’ Tim said. But he was not really interested in Annie. Something else was puzzling—and exciting—him. She must have picked up this diamond somewhere. Suppose she had found it in the cave where he had found his ruby—suppose his ruby was a ruby, after all—suppose it was a smuggler’s cave …

  ‘Where’d you find it?’ he demanded. And then, though anything else seemed unlikely, ‘Did you find it?’

  Perdita shook her head slowly. A piece of glass worth a king’s ransom. That’s what Mr Jones had said. ‘Mr Jones said it was a piece of glass,’ she said, and paused. ‘What’s a king’s ransom?’ she asked.

  ‘Just another way of saying a lot of money. D’you mean someone gave it to you?’

  Perdita nodded. ‘He said he’d got plenty more, so I don’t suppose it mattered giving me one.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘That’s what he had in the box! I thought it was toffees!’

  Tim noticed nothing. It was Janey who made the connexion. Since she could not look at people’s faces while they talked, she always listened very closely to what they said. ‘Was it our Mr Jones who gave you the stone, then? We call him Toffee Papers.’

  She said absently, ‘He did eat a lot of toffees and dropped the paper about. Annie was cross because of the mess. But I call him Frog Face.’

  ‘He has got a face like a frog,’ Tim said. ‘Sort of bulgy and flat at the same time.’ It struck him that this was not altogether polite, although Perdita had mentioned it first. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.

  ‘Why?’ Perdita asked.

  ‘Well. It’s a bit rude, my saying that, when he’s a friend of yours.’

  ‘Oh, he’s not a friend of mine,’ Perdita said cheerfully. ‘I just met him once, that’s all.’

  Tim’s eyes grew round. This was becoming more and more extraordinary. A witch’s daughter who wore a diamond round her neck—a diamond given her by Mr Jones, whom she had only met once! And yet he was sure she wasn’t lying.

  ‘Where’d you meet him?’ he asked abruptly.

  Perdita said nothing. She had already said too much, she suddenly realised. Mr Smith did not want talk about his visitor. She had promised Annie. She hung her head and began to draw letters in the sand, pretending she had not heard Tim’s question.

  But he thought he knew the answer to it. He had found a stone on
the beach which looked like a ruby. Suppose there were others—not necessarily a smuggler’s treasure trove, but a box of jewels, perhaps, washed ashore from a wrecked ship. Suppose Toffee Papers had found it and Perdita had seen him, and he had given her the diamond. Why? Why would he do that? Perhaps—Tim began to feel very excited—perhaps because he didn’t want to hand the jewels over to the police and it was a sort of bribe …

  ‘Did he tell you to keep it secret?’ he asked.

  Perdita said nothing.

  ‘Did he find it on the beach?’ Tim went on. ‘Did he …’

  But Perdita stood up. ‘I’m going now,’ she said.

  ‘Are you going home?’ Janey asked. ‘Where do you live?’

  But Perdita did not answer, only ducked her head and ran fast across the sand. They watched her disappear in the dunes and then appear again, climbing up the cropped turf to the dry-stone wall.

  ‘You shouldn’t have kept on asking things,’ Janey said. ‘She doesn’t like it.’

  ‘You don’t find out things if you don’t ask,’ Tim said.

  *

  ‘That’ll be Annie MacLaren’s foster daughter,’ Mrs Tarbutt said. ‘Lives up at Luinpool. Annie MacLaren’s housekeeper to Mr Smith. I’m surprised she spoke to you. She’s a shy creature.’

  ‘Wild,’ Mr Tarbutt said, and grinned at the children, sitting at the table in the hotel kitchen and eating their tea. ‘You ought to watch out, young Tim,’ he said solemnly. ‘The children round here fight shy of her. They say she’s a witch.’

  ‘Now, Father …’ Mrs Tarbutt gave him a reproachful look. ‘Fancy filling them up with that nonsense.’ She said, to Tim, ‘They’re not very sociable, up at Luinpool. The little lass doesn’t mix with other children. So they think she’s strange.’

  ‘That’s all, is it?’ Mr Tarbutt winked at Tim. ‘Mrs Tarbutt’s town bred. She comes from Edinburgh.’

  ‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,’ Mrs Tarbutt said primly.

  ‘Town people only believe what they see under their noses,’ Mr Tarbutt said. ‘No respect for the supernatural.’

  ‘Certainly I haven’t any,’ Mrs Tarbutt said, with a little toss of her head and a smile for her husband, whose teasing she enjoyed. ‘I’ve got better things to think about.’ Then the smile left her face and she looked suddenly worried. ‘Such as Mr Jones. Here it is, tea time and no sign of him—no sign since last night.’

  Mr Tarbutt smiled. ‘He’s all right. I told you not to worry. He probably went off early this morning.’

  Mrs Tarbutt looked thoughtful. ‘His bed was mussed up, as if he’d slept in it, but, d’you know, I wondered if he had? His wash basin was tidy and he usually makes a fine old mess, shaving in the morning.’

  ‘If he went off early, he wouldn’t bother to shave,’ Mr Tarbutt said. ‘I’ve got an idea he may have gone shooting with Campbell. He was saying he thought he’d be going one day soon, after deer. Maybe he offered to take Mr Jones—they were thick last night, in the bar.’

  ‘It’s odd he didn’t tell us though, isn’t it?’ Mrs Tarbutt said.

  ‘Odd. But not odd enough to worry. He’ll turn up before dark, I daresay.’ Mr Tarbutt grinned broadly. ‘Unless the fairies have taken him,’ he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WRECKED SHIPS AND TREASURE

  ‘WHAT ARE YOU doing, Tim?’ Janey asked.

  ‘Thinking.’

  ‘Can I look at your stones, then?’

  ‘If you want to.’

  Janey picked up the box clumsily, and spilled the stones on the floor.

  ‘Look what you’ve done,’ Tim said crossly. ‘Interrupting me … Pick them up, every one.’

  Janey knelt and swept her hands over the floor, feeling for the stones. She counted them into the box in a low, droning voice. ‘Twenty nine,’ she said. She sat back on her heels and looked puzzled. ‘Funny—there’s twenty nine and there should be twenty nine altogether …’

  ‘What’s funny, then?’

  ‘Well, the last one you got isn’t here.’

  ‘The ruby one?’ Tim looked at the box. ‘Here it is, silly.’ He picked up the red stone and gave it to Janey. She felt it carefully, turning it in her fingers and stroking the surface. ‘This isn’t it,’ she said.

  ‘’Course it is,’ Tim said, ‘Don’t interrupt me when I’m thinking.’

  In fact he wasn’t thinking, so much as dreaming—about Perdita’s diamond and his ruby, and wrecked ships and treasure …

  Janey was frowning. ‘It isn’t the same, though. The other one had more—more sides, and there was a sort of gritty patch …’

  Tim took the stone from her. It looked the same—or it had looked the same until now. Now, he wasn’t sure whether it looked different or whether he knew it must be different because Janey had said so. There didn’t seem to be so much colour in it, so much life and fire. ‘It looks just like red glass,’ he whispered.

  ‘The burglar stole it,’ Janey said. ‘He came in and stole it and changed it for this one. This is a new one. I never saw it before.’

  She would be right about that, Tim knew. She never made a mistake about things she had felt carefully, and got to know. His heart jumped in his throat. Janey never made a mistake about what she heard, either …

  He was terrified. ‘Janey,’ he whispered. ‘Janey—perhaps there was a burglar here last night, after all …’

  ‘I told you there was, didn’t I?’ Janey said in an irritated voice.

  ‘Ssh,’ Tim said. He slipped off the bed, where he had been sitting to think, and rest his foot, and went to close the bedroom door.

  ‘I wasn’t awake enough to be scared, really,’ Janey said. ‘But I heard someone breathing …’

  There was a catch in her voice. Tim knelt and put his arm round her shoulders.

  ‘We ought to tell Mr Tarbutt,’ she said.

  ‘You did tell him last night. He didn’t believe you.’

  ‘About the ruby, I mean. It must have been a ruby, or the burglar wouldn’t have stolen it, would he? So if you tell Mr Tarbutt, he’ll know there was a burglar and he’ll tell the police and they’ll catch him and put him in prison. Then you’ll get the ruby back and we’ll sell it and we’ll all be rich for ever and ever …’

  Janey gave a happy little sigh, as if she had just finished telling herself a lovely story.

  And that’s what it would sound like to Mr Tarbutt, Tim thought. A lovely story. ‘He wouldn’t believe a word of it,’ he said.

  ‘Why ever not?’ Janey asked. ‘You just show him the stone and tell him someone stole yours. It’s proof.’

  ‘No,’ Tim said. ‘Or it’s only proof for us. I mean, we know it’s different, but Mr Tarbutt won’t know.’

  ‘We’ll tell him, then,’ Janey said confidently.

  Tim said nothing. He believed the stone was different, because Janey had said it was, but Mr Tarbutt would never understand how Janey could be so sure. He didn’t know Janey. He didn’t know that she would remember the shape of something she had seen with her fingers better than an ordinary person who had only used his eyes. Only their mother and father would understand that.

  ‘We’d best not say anything till we see Dad,’ he said. ‘Though I don’t suppose he’ll believe it either. I mean, he’ll believe in the burglar, all right, once his memory comes back, and he’ll believe he took my stone, but he’ll think it was just some sort of mistake …’

  ‘What sort of mistake?’

  Tim sighed. ‘Oh, I dunno. But you know what Dad is. He’ll find out some sort of reason … he saw the ruby, you see, and he didn’t believe it was one.’

  He got up and went to the window. He stood, staring out. In his mind, he could hear his father’s calm, reasonable voice, talking and talking. My dear Tim, even if it was a ruby, which I don’t happen to believe, why should anyone steal it? After all, no one knew you had it, did they?

  Suddenly Tim’s heart gave a leap, like a fish jumping in his throat. Mr Smith had
known. He had said it wasn’t a ruby, but if he was a crook, he would have said that anyway, wouldn’t he? So that he would have time to find a piece of glass that looked just like it before he came to the hotel, creeping in to steal like a thief in the night … But how could he have got in? The window had been bolted and no one had come into the hotel by the door. At least, Toffee Papers had been sure no one had. He and Mr Campbell had been sitting in the bar all the time. Mr Campbell. Was it the same Mr Campbell Mr Smith knew, the one who lived in the tent on the beach? Of course Campbell was as common a name in Scotland as Smith was in England. But suppose it was the same man. Suppose Mr Smith had told him about the ruby and Mr Campbell had told Toffee Papers …

  ‘He stole my stone,’ Tim said loudly. ‘Toffee Papers stole my stone, because he didn’t want anyone to know there was treasure on the beach. And when Dad came in and caught him, he knocked him down.’ He clenched his fists. ‘He ought to be put in prison.’

  ‘How do you know he found the treasure on the beach?’ Janey asked.

  Something in the calm way she spoke might have made Tim doubtful if he had not been so absorbed in his own thoughts. ‘Well, because Perdita must’ve met him on the beach and that was when he gave her the diamond.’

  ‘She didn’t meet him on the beach,’ Janey said. ‘He was up at her house. She said Annie was cross because of the mess he made with the toffee papers. Don’t you remember?’