The Witch's Daughter

by Nina Bawden

  Janey seemed to be moving very slowly now. ‘Hurry,’ Tim urged, pushing her from behind, and then letting her go and running past her, towards the light.

  Perdita followed him. They reached the main cave, tumbling over each other like puppies. The light was grey because the day was darkening, not only with evening but also with a curtain of rain, blowing into the cave and hissing on the shingle, but it was light. Light—after that terrible blackness. Perdita and Tim shouted with joy. They shouted so loud that for a little Janey could not make herself heard.

  ‘Tim … Tim …’

  He heard her at last. She had come out of the tunnel and was standing in the cave, her hands out in front of her. ‘I can’t see anymore, there aren’t any more walls,’ she said.

  The other two fell silent. They looked at each other and then down at their feet. Neither of them spoke.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Janey asked. She smiled broadly and wrapped her arms across her chest, hugging herself with delight. ‘I found the way out, didn’t I? You’d never have found it yourselves …’

  Tim ran to her, put his arms round her and hugged and kissed her. ‘You were wonderful,’ he said. ‘A heroine, Janey. You saved our lives.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t very hard,’ Janey said modestly. ‘Can we go home now? I’m so hungry.’

  They went to the mouth of the cave. The sharp rain prickled their faces and hands and the blustering wind caught their breath and almost blew them back inside. Tim had to put his arms round Janey, to steady her.

  ‘Let’s wait a bit. It’ll be awful, going back along the cliff in this,’ he said. ‘Absolutely awful.’

  But Janey pouted. ‘I don’t mind the rain. I’m hungry.’ He looked at her and saw she looked pale and tired, suddenly, as if the effort of getting them out of the cave had exhausted her. ‘I want to go home,’ she said, and the pout turned into a miserable little trembling of her lips. ‘I want my Mum.’

  His heart smote him. ‘All right,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t cry, Janey. We’ll be home quite soon.’

  He put his arm round her, to protect her as much as he could from the wind, and began to help her over the rocks towards the cliff path. ‘Come on, Perdita,’ he shouted over his shoulder, but she answered something he couldn’t catch and turned towards the cliff where the water of the lower fall crashed onto the beach like thunder. ‘Come back, idiot,’ Tim shouted, but either she didn’t hear, or had determined to take no notice: she began to climb up the side of the fall.

  Tim hesitated, torn. That was a dangerous climb, even for a girl who was used to cliffs and mountains. But he daren’t go after her, he daren’t leave Janey …

  ‘Where’s Perdita?’ she asked now. ‘I want Perdita …’

  Tim remembered what Perdita had said yesterday, when he told her about his climb down to the cave. ‘She’s gone up the cliff,’ he said, ‘that’s the quickest way home for her.’

  ‘I expect she’s hurrying home to tell about horrible old Toffee Papers leaving us in the cave,’ Janey said. There was an ominous shake in her voice as if she had just realised that this was a frightening thing to have happened. ‘Just like the Babes in the Wood,’ she said. ‘D’you remember, Tim? The wicked man took them into the wood and left them and they died and the robins came and covered them with leaves.’

  ‘It’s all right, we aren’t dead, are we?’ Tim soothed her. They were off the rocks now, and on the path between the high walls of the cliff. It was more sheltered here, though overhead the wind cracked like a giant whip. ‘But if she tells Mr Smith …’ Tim began, and stopped. If she told Mr Smith, told him everything, he would know the police were likely to be after him and he would try to escape, like Toffee Papers. ‘We better hurry …’ Tim said.

  He set too fast a pace for Janey. Though she tried to keep up, she was very tired and began to sob under her breath and stumble. He slowed to match her pace, though it was an effort: his own tiredness had vanished at the marvellous prospect of bringing a criminal to justice. Why, he would be the hero of the hour! And what would his father say? His father, who had always refused to believe anything really exciting could ever happen. Too much imagination, old chap? He would never dare say that again, Tim thought, and laughed aloud.

  When they came to the end of the sheltered stretch, the path along the cliff face was as slippery as he had feared it would be. He was too occupied, then, encouraging and comforting Janey, to dream of future glory, too occupied, even, to be frightened, although the storm had whipped the sea below them into a witch’s cauldron of black waves and flying spray. By the time they reached the bay, Janey was crying properly and could walk no further. With an immense effort, Tim heaved her up into his arms and carried her a few yards before he collapsed on the beach. ‘I can’t,’ he gasped, ‘you weigh about a ton.’

  She clung to him, crying, and they huddled together, too cold and wet now to think of anything except the little shelter they could give each other from the rain and the wind that flung stinging sand into their faces. The wind howled and screamed round them as if it were trying to tear the clothes from their backs: it made such a noise that they could hear nothing else. They did not hear Mr Tarbutt until he stood above them and jerked them to their feet.

  He was wearing black oilskins. His tow-coloured hair lay in strands over his face.

  ‘Silly young fool,’ he said angrily to Tim. ‘I’d have thought you had more sense …’

  He picked Janey up in his arms, and for once she did not protest. He carried her over to the shelter of the great rock and set her down there for a minute, while he wiped the sand from her face.

  ‘We found Mr Jones,’ she said, when her sobs had quietened. ‘How’d you find us?’

  He explained that he had been searching since five o’clock. It was now almost nine. He had been to the bay before, but seen no sign of them. ‘You’ve led me a fine dance, all over the island,’ he scolded. ‘It was just chance I came here a second time …’ Then his eyes narrowed, as if the other thing Janey had said had only now come home to him. ‘What’s this about Mr Jones?’

  ‘He stole Tim’s ruby,’ Janey said shrilly. ‘He was the burglar. And he took us into the cave and left us there, he’s not a nice man at all, he’s a horrible beast …’

  He eyed her incredulously. ‘But what …?’ he began, and then decided not to question her further. ‘Best get home,’ he muttered. ‘It’ll wait …’

  But Tim was not content to wait. He ran beside Mr Tarbutt and Janey, shouting to tell the man all he had heard and all he had guessed. Mr Tarbutt did his best to listen, although the climb up from the bay and round the boggy slopes of Ben Luin was a hard one, in the rain and the wind. From time to time he nodded, and the rain flew out of the brim of his black, oilskin hat. He had unbuttoned his coat and tucked Janey inside it: all Tim could see of her was her long wet hair, streaming over Mr Tarbutt’s shoulder.

  ‘So we’ll have to telephone the police,’ Tim gasped out finally. ‘Just as soon as we get back.’

  They were over the top of the ridge and going down towards Skuaphort. Mr Tarbutt stopped in the lee of the ruined cottage to rest a minute and adjust Janey’s weight. Incredibly, she seemed to have gone to sleep, breathing with little snores, her thumb half in, half out of, her mouth. Mr Tarbutt grinned at Tim over her head. ‘I reckon they may be here already, lad,’ he said. ‘Your mother, too, poor soul. Worried out of her mind about you.’

  *

  As Tim said, Mrs Hoggart had a good memory for faces. She had remembered, a little after she had spoken to Mr Tarbutt, exactly where she had seen Mr Jones—or, rather, his photograph—before. She had told the police in Oban. ‘Some time ago and something to do with a robbery,’ was all she could tell them, but it had been enough. The police not only knew about Mr Jones: they knew he was on Skua.

  ‘They’d kept an eye on him these last three years apparently,’ Mr Tarbutt said, when he had explained that Mrs Hoggart had telephoned again, from the police station
in Oban, just as he had returned from his first, fruitless expedition to the bay. ‘So when he came north, it was a matter of routine to inform the local police. Not that there was anything against him, you understand …’ Mr Tarbutt hesitated. ‘Not until he attacked your father, that is. It seems he’d done nothing suspicious since the jewels were stolen—nothing to show he wasn’t as innocent as he claimed to be. Just got on with his job, and then, after three years, a little holiday on Skua …’

  Tim was almost too breathless with excitement to speak. ‘What about Mr Smith?’ he managed to gasp, but Mr Tarbutt shrugged his shoulders and gave Tim a doubtful, sideways look.

  ‘Nothing on him, far as I know. Just a quiet gentleman who minds his own business. Still, if you tell the police what you’ve told me, I daresay they’ll pay him a little visit.’

  ‘He’ll have gone by then,’ Tim said glumly. The wind was gentler now they were down off the ridge and when they reached the stone road, he was able to trot beside Mr Tarbutt quite comfortably, telling him about Perdita and how she had gone home up the cliff. ‘She’ll have warned him,’ he said. ‘She knows he’s a thief and he ought to go to prison, I told her, but she didn’t like it much. She said he’d been good to her and Annie.’

  ‘Poor little lass,’ Mr Tarbutt said.

  ‘It would have been poor all of us,’ Tim said indignantly. ‘If that horrible Mr Jones had had his way.’

  Mr Tarbutt made no direct reply to this, but he shifted Janey’s weight against his shoulder and took Tim’s hand. He held it tight and comfortingly, until they reached the little town and saw the lights of the police launch, rocking in the bay, and Mrs Hoggart waiting, wild-eyed and frantic in the doorway of the hotel. After she had hugged and kissed them and heard their story—which led to more hugging and kissing and a few, grateful tears—she told them that Mr Jones had never got to Trull. Will Campbell’s boat had been near foundering in the rough sea when the daily ferry that ran between Trull and the mainland, had picked them up and taken them to Oban.

  Mr Jones had been arrested as he walked off the boat.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A LITTLE WILD THING, HALF-CRAZED

  THE WITCH’S DAUGHTER came down to the loch. The hills sheltered it from the wind, but the heavy rain steamed onto it, making the mist rise, white and thick. It swirled round her, clinging in damp pearls to her rain-soaked hair. She had run so fast that the cold breath sobbed in her throat and sent spikes of pain down into her chest: as she stumbled onto the pebbly shore of the loch, the greedy black water sucked at her boots and she stumbled and almost fell.

  Recovering, she stood still a minute. The Lake Horse had come out of the loch on a night like this, and taken her mother. Annie MacLaren had said so, and Perdita believed it, as she believed the other things the old woman had told her. Indeed, Perdita was sure she had often seen the Lake Horse, racing across the surface of the water. He had never frightened her. Why should he? All he could do, would be to take her to live with her mother under the surface of the loch.

  But tonight, peering into the mist, she was afraid. Too frightened to move, suddenly, too frightened, even, to whimper. Fear—this kind of cold, rigid fear—was new to her. Witches are never frightened. Perhaps what Tim had said in the cave was true: she had stopped being a witch, and become ordinary, like other children.

  She thought: but ordinary children can’t breathe under water. If the Lake Horse came for her tonight, she would drown. She began to stumble round the shore of the loch, no longer a witch, just a frightened little girl. And when she saw him, out of the corner of her eye—huge, white, with a great, flowing mane—she began to scream loudly and piercingly, like any other frightened child.

  As she screamed, the Lake Horse began to change shape. His neck extended, became thin and tenuous, until it drifted away from his body, and his body itself began to dissolve, to melt …

  Perdita stopped screaming. ‘You’re nothing … just mist,’ she said in a loud, contemptuous voice, and ran away from the loch, up the side of the bank towards Luinpool.

  *

  Annie MacLaren was standing by the back door, an oil lamp in her hand. ‘Where’ve you been, lady? He’s been on at me, worrying.’

  Perdita ran past her, through the kitchen and into the hall. Her footsteps slowed as she reached the door of Mr Smith’s room, and she stood outside it for a moment, her heart thumping. Mr Jones was a bad man and he had left them in the cave—to die, Tim had said. He had said Mr Smith was a bad man, too. If that was true, what would he do, when she admitted what she had done? Then she remembered that he had often been kind to her, drew a long, shaky breath, and opened the door.

  He was lying back in his chair, an open book face downwards on his lap. He looked up and asked what she wanted in an irritated voice that would ordinarily have sent her scuttling from the room: she wasn’t frightened of Mr Smith, but Annie had taught her to respect his moods.

  He seemed surprised when she stood her ground. ‘Anything the matter?’ he asked, quite kindly, sitting up in his chair and closing his book.

  She swallowed hard: ‘They’re going to tell the police about you,’ she said.

  Mr Smith picked up the poker and thumped thoughtfully at a lump of peat on the fire, making the sparks fly. Then he looked up at her, smiling. ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘The boy and girl from the hotel. Tim says you’ll go to prison.’

  ‘Prison?’ Mr Smith said. He still smiled, but his fist was clenched on the handle of the poker. ‘Does he say what for?’

  Perdita looked down at her feet. ‘He says you’re a bad man.’

  ‘What kind of bad man?’ he asked mildly.

  Encouraged by his gentleness, she looked at him. ‘A thief. He says you’re the head of a gang of jewel thieves.’

  Mr Smith laughed, rather too loudly. ‘That’s a good story. I gather you’ve been talking, witch. Haven’t you?’ She did not answer and, after a minute he said slowly, ‘I see … So you told them all about me, eh? What did you tell them, exactly?’

  ‘Nothing. Not about you.’ Her lips felt dry and she moistened them with the tip of her tongue. ‘I just showed Janey my lucky stone and they found out Mr Jones gave it to me that night he came here. And when he ran away and left us in Carlin’s Cave …

  ‘When he did what?’

  Stumblingly, frightened by his look and the sudden harshness in his voice, Perdita explained about the cave and how Mr Jones had taken them in and left them there, without a light. ‘Tim said he left us there to die, just so he could get away,’ she said, and her lip quivered.

  Mr Smith stared into the fire. ‘The fool—oh the fool,’ he said. ‘My God—if they believe that, they’ll take the island apart.’ He was silent, then, for what seemed to Perdita a terribly long time and when he began to speak again it was very softly, as if he were talking to himself. ‘Who’ll believe it, though? A child’s story? If he’s got clean away …’ Suddenly he dropped the poker on to the hearth with a clatter and said, ‘I’ve got to know …’

  He looked at Perdita. ‘Come here, little witch,’ he said. His voice was gentle again, but it was a forced gentleness. She went to him reluctantly and he held her fast by the wrist as Mr Jones had done, the night he came. ‘Look at me.’ She looked at him and saw her own reflection in the dark pools of his glasses. ‘Listen,’ Mr Smith said, ‘there’s something you’ve got to do for me …’

  *

  A little later the white Jaguar drove down to Skuaphort. Just outside the town it stopped and pulled off the road into a farm gateway. Perdita got out. The wind was very strong now and seemed to blow her like a leaf, down the stony road towards the town and the hotel.

  At the closed door, she hesitated. Find Tim, Mr Smith had said, find Tim and ask him … Though the hotel door was closed, it would not be locked, she knew: no one locked doors on Skua. She could steal in and up to his room. She knew which it was—first on the left at the top of the stairs, Janey had told her. She put her hand in t
he door, and then withdrew it, her courage failing. The bar was dark, but light streamed from the lounge window into an empty sun parlour that had been built against the side of the hotel. The parlour had a door that gave onto the street. As soon as she turned the handle, the wind blew the door inwards: once inside, it took all her strength to close it. She climbed on a crate of empty beer bottles and peered through the window into the lounge.

  Tim was there. He was sitting by the fire in his dressing gown between his mother and a large man Perdita had never seen on the island before. He had close-cropped, gingery hair and a large, amiable, pale face. He was talking. She could see his lips move but the window was closed and she could not hear what he said.

  *

  The policeman had a soft, Scotch voice. He rolled his R’s beautifully. He had a brown mole low down on one pale cheek, and while he talked it waggled up and down.

  ‘So you see,’ he was saying, ‘we’d kept tabs on Pr-r-att. Or Jones, if you like, since that’s the name you’ve got used to. We didn’t believe his story, but since he sat tight and did nothing, there was nothing we could do, either. Not directly. Enquiries were made, of course. There was this gang he’d talked of—well, you know most of the time the police have a pretty good idea what most of the criminal population is up to, and this wasn’t any gang they could put a finger on. More likely there was just one other man—possibly two, but probably one. Someone who’d got at Jones—someone pretty persuasive, because firms in the jewel trade are careful whom they employ, you know, and there was no suggestion he’d been up to anything of this sort before. Well—who had he been seeing? No one, it seemed, except a few innocent neighbours, until we came up with this man. It turned out that he’d been seen with a stranger several times, walking in the park, talking in a local pub. That was some time before the robbery took place—no one remembered seeing him afterwards. Naturally we asked Jones, but he denied it. At least, he didn’t exactly deny it, he just said he was a friendly sort and often talked to strangers, but that he didn’t remember talking to anyone in particular during the last six months … Well, we couldn’t press it. You can’t hound a man without evidence and there wasn’t any evidence. Only suspicion. He did seem to have a bit more money than he’d had before. He launched out a bit—new washing machine, new motor mower, that sort of thing. Not enough to act on, just enough to make us wonder …’