“It was a bit much, that spell on Simon!”
“Really, Nan, I know we asked you, but you should think first.”
“Look what he did to Theresa. And she lost her knitting over it.”
And Nan, instead of submitting or apologizing, as she usually did, said, “What’s put it into your pretty little heads that that spell was mine?”
“Because we know you’re a witch,” said Heather.
“Of course,” said Nan. “But what gave you the idea I was the only one? You think, Heather, instead of just opening your little pink mouth and letting words trickle out. I told you, it takes time to make a spell. I told you about picking herbs and flying around and chanting, didn’t I? And I left out the way you have to catch bats. That takes ages, even on a fast modern broomstick, because bats are so good at dodging. And you were with me in the bathroom, and with me all the time all this last week, and you know I haven’t had time to catch bats or pick herbs, and you’ve seen I haven’t been muttering and incantating. So you see? It wasn’t me.”
She could tell they were convinced, because they all looked so disappointed. Heather muttered, “And you said you couldn’t fly that broomstick!” but she said nothing more. Nan was pleased. She seemed to have shut them up without losing her reputation as a witch.
All except Karen. Karen was newly admitted to the number of Theresa’s friends. That made her very zealous. “Well, I think you should work a spell now,” she said. “Theresa’s lost a pair of bootees she spent hours knitting, and I think the least you can do is get them back for her.”
“No trouble at all,” Nan said airily. “But does Theresa want me to try?”
Theresa finished buttoning her pajamas and turned away to brush her hair. “She’s not going to try, Karen,” she said. “I should be ashamed to get my knitting back that way!”
“Lights out,” said a monitor at the door. “Do these belong to anyone? The caretaker found them in his dog’s basket.” She held up two small gray fluffy things with holes in them.
The look everyone gave Nan, as Theresa went to claim her bootees, made Nan wonder if she had been wise to talk like that. And I don’t even really know if I’m still a witch, she thought, as she got into bed. I’ll keep my mouth shut in the future. And that broomstick stays on top of the cupboard. I don’t care if I did promise it.
Right in the middle of the night, she was awakened by something prodding at her. Nan, in her sleep, rolled out of the way, and rolled again, until she woke up in the act of falling out of bed. There was a swift swishing noise. Something she only dimly saw in the near-dark dived over her and then dived under her. Nan woke up completely to find herself six feet off the floor and doubled over the broomstick, with her head hanging down one side and her feet the other. The knobby handle was a painful thing to be draped over. Nevertheless, Nan began to laugh. I am a witch after all! she thought joyfully.
“Put me down, you big fraud!” she whispered. “You were just playing for sympathy, pretending you needed a rider, weren’t you? Put me down and go and fly yourself!”
The broomstick’s answer was to rise up to the ceiling. Nan’s bed looked like a small dim oblong from there. She knew she would miss it if she tried to jump off.
“You big bully!” she said. “I know I promised, but that was before—”
The broom drifted suggestively towards the window. Nan became alarmed. The window was open because Theresa believed in fresh air. She had visions of herself being carted over the countryside, draped over the stick in nothing but pajamas. She gave in.
“All right. I’ll fly you. But let me go down and get some blankets first. I’m not going to go like this!”
The broom whirled around and swooped back to Nan’s bed. Nan’s legs flew out and she landed on the mattress with a bounce. The broom did not trust her in the least. It hovered over her while she dragged the pink school blankets from her bed, and as soon as she had wrapped them around her, it made quite sure of her by darting underneath her and swooping up to the ceiling again. Nan was thrown backwards. She nearly ended hanging underneath again.
“Go carefully!” she whispered. “Let me get settled.”
The broom hovered impatiently while Nan tried to balance herself and get comfortable. She did not dare take too long over it. All the swooping and whispering were disturbing the other girls. Quite a few of them were turning over and murmuring crossly. Nan tried to sit on the broom and toppled over sideways. She got tangled in her blankets. In the end, she simply fell forward on her face and settled for lying along the handle again, in a bundle of blanket, with her feet hooked up on the brush.
Before she had even gotten comfortable like that, the broomstick swooped to the window, nudged it further open, and darted outside. There was pitch black night out there. It was cold, with a drizzle of rain falling. Nan wrinkled her face against it and tried to get used to being high up. The broom flew with a strange choppy movement, not altogether pleasant for a person lying on her face.
Nan talked, to take her mind off it. “How is this,” she said, “for romantic dreams come true? I always thought of myself flying a broomstick on a warm summer night, outlined against an enormous moon, with a nightingale or so singing its head off. And look at us!” Underneath her, the broomstick jerked. It was obviously a shrug.
“Yes, I daresay it is the best we can do,” Nan said. “But I don’t feel very glamorous like this, and I’m getting wet. I bet Dulcinea Wilkes used to sit on her broom, gracefully, sidesaddle probably, with her long hair flowing out behind. And because it was London, she probably wore an elegant silk dress, with lots of lacy petticoats showing from underneath. Did you know I was descended from Dulcinea Wilkes?”
The rippling underneath her might have been the broom’s way of nodding. But it could have been laughing at the contrast.
Nan found she could see in the dark now. She looked down and blenched. The broomstick felt very flimsy to be this high. It had soared and turned while she was talking, so that the square shapes of the school were a long way below and to one side. The pale spread of the playing field was directly underneath, and beyond that Nan could see the entire town, filling the valley ahead. The houses were all dark, with orange chains of streetlights in between. And in spite of the drifting drizzle, Nan could see as far as the blackness of Larwood Forest on the hill opposite.
“Let’s fly over the forest,” she said.
The broom swept off. Once you got used to it, it really would be a nice feeling, Nan told herself firmly, blinking against the drizzle. Secret, silent flight. It was in her blood. She held the end of the broom handle in both hands and tried to point it at the town. But the broom had other ideas. It wanted to go around the edge of the town. The result was that they flew sideways, jolting a little.
“Fly over the houses,” said Nan.
The broom gave a shake that nearly sent her tumbling off. No.
“I suppose someone might look up and see us,” Nan agreed. “All right. You win again. Bully.” And it occurred to her that her dreams of flying against a huge full moon were really the most arrant romantic nonsense. No witch in her senses would do that, for fear the inquisitors might see her.
So they swooped over fields, and across the main road in a rush of rain. The rain at first came at Nan’s face in separate drops out of the orange haze made by the streetlights. Then it was just wetness out of darkness, as they reached Larwood Forest, and the wetness brought a smell with it of autumn leaves and mushroom. But even a dark wood is not quite black at night. Nan could see paler trees, which still had yellow leaves, and she could clearly see mist caused by the rain smoking out above the trees. Some of it seemed to be real smoke. Nan smelled fire distinctly. A wet fire, burning smokily.
She suddenly felt rather quiet. “I say, that can’t be a bonfire, can it? If it’s after midnight, it is Halloween, isn’t it?”
The idea seemed to upset the broom. It stopped with a jerk. For a second, its front end tipped downwards as if it
were thinking of landing. Nan had to grip hard in order not to slide off head first. Then it began actually flying backwards, wagging its brush in agitated sweeps, so that Nan’s feet were swirled from side to side.
“Stop it!” she said. “I shall be sick in a minute!”
They did, she knew, sometimes burn witch’s brooms with the witch they belonged to. So she was not surprised when the broom swung around, away from the smell of smoke, and began flying back towards the school, in a stately sort of way, as if that was the way it had meant to go all along.
“You don’t fool me,” she said. “But you can go back if you want. I’m soaked.”
The broom continued on its wet and stately way, high above the fields and the main road, until the pale flatness of the playing field appeared beneath them once more. Nan was just thinking that she would be in bed any minute now, when a new notion seemed to strike the broom. It dived a sickening fifty feet and put on speed. Nan found herself hurtling over the field, about twenty feet up, and oozing off backwards with the speed. She hung on and shouted to it to stop. Nothing she said made any difference. The broom continued to hurtle.
“Oh really!” Nan gasped. “You are the most willful thing I’ve ever known! Stop!”
The rain beat in her face, but she could see something ahead now, all the same. It was something dark against the grass, and it was quite big, too big for a broom, although it was flying too, floating gently away across the field. The broom was racing towards it. As they plunged on, Nan saw that the thing was flat underneath, with the shape of a person on top of it. It got bigger and bigger. Nan decided it could only be a small carpet with a man sitting on it. She tugged and jerked at the broom handle, but there seemed nothing she could do to stop the broom.
The broom plunged gladly up alongside the dark shape. It was a man on a small carpet. The broom swooped around it, wagging its end so hard that Nan bit her tongue. It nuzzled and nudged and jogged at the carpet, jerking Nan this way and that as it went. And the carpet seemed equally delighted to meet the broom. It was jiggling and flapping, and rippling so that the man on top of it was rolled this way and that. Nan shrank down and clung to the broom, hoping that she just looked like a roll of blankets to whoever this witch on a carpet was.
But the man was becoming annoyed by the antics of the carpet and the broom. “Can’t you control that thing yet?” he snapped.
Nan shrank down even further. Her bitten tongue made it hard to speak anyway, and she was almost glad of it. She knew that voice. It was Mr. Wentworth’s.
“And I told you never to ride that thing in term time, Brian,” Mr. Wentworth said. When Nan still did not say anything, he added, “I know, I know. But this wretched hearthrug insists on going out every night.”
This is worse and worse! Nan thought. Mr. Wentworth thought she was Brian. So Brian must be—with a fierce effort, she managed to wrench the broom around, away from the hearthrug. With an even fiercer effort, she got it going again, towards the school. By kicking it hard with her bare toes, she kept it going. When she was some way away, she risked turning around and whispering, “Sorry.” She hoped Mr. Wentworth would go on thinking she was Brian.
Mr. Wentworth called something after her as the broomstick lumbered away, but Nan did not even try to hear what it was. She did not want to know. She could still barely believe it. Besides, she needed all her attention to make the broom go. It was very reluctant. It flew across the field in a dismal, trudging way, which reminded Nan irresistibly of Charles Morgan, but at least it went. Nan was pleased to discover that she could control it after all, when she had to.
It made particularly heavy weather of lifting Nan upwards to her dormitory window. She almost believed it groaned. Some of the difficulty may have been real. All Nan’s pink school blankets were soaked through by now and they must have weighed a great deal. But Nan remembered what an act the broom had put on in the afternoon and resolved to be pitiless. She drummed with her toes again. Up went the broom through the dark rainy night, up and up the wall, until at last they were outside the half-open dormitory window. Nan helped the broom shoulder the window open wider, and then swooped to the floor on her stomach. What a relief! she thought.
Someone whispered, “I put dry blankets on your bed.”
Nan nearly fainted. After a pause to recover, she rolled herself off the broom and knelt up in her sopping blankets. A dim figure in regulation school pajamas was standing in front of her, bending down a little, so that Nan could see the hair was curly. Heather? No, don’t be daft! Estelle. “Estelle?” she whispered.
“Hush!” whispered Estelle. “Come and help put these blankets in the airing cupboard. We can talk there.”
“But the broom—?” Nan whispered.
“Send it away.”
A good idea, Nan thought, if only the broom would obey. She picked it up, shedding soaking blankets as she went, and carried it to the window. “Go to the groundsman’s shed,” she told it in a severe whisper, and sent it off with a firm shove. Knowing the kind of broom it was, she would not have been surprised if it had simply clattered to the ground. But it obeyed her, rather to her astonishment—or at least, it flew off into the rainy night.
Estelle was already lugging the heap of blankets to the door. Nan tiptoed to help her. Together they dragged the heap down the passage and into the fateful bathroom. There, Estelle shut the door and daringly turned on the light.
“It’ll be all right if we don’t talk too loud,” she said. “I’m awfully sorry—Theresa woke up while I was making your bed. I had to tell her you’d been sick. I said you were in the bathroom being sick again. Can you remember that if she asks tomorrow?”
“Thanks,” said Nan. “That was kind of you. Did I wake you going out?”
“Yes, but it was training mostly,” Estelle said. She opened the big airing cupboard. “If we fold these blankets and put them right at the back, no one’s going to find them for weeks. They might even be dry by then, but with this school’s heating there’s no relying on that.”
It was not a quick job. They had to take out the piles of pale pink dry blankets stacked in the cupboard, fold the heavy bright pink wet ones, put them in at the back, and then put all the dry ones back to hide them.
“Why did you say training woke you up?” Nan asked Estelle as they worked.
“Training with the witches’ underground escape route,” said Estelle. “My mum used to belong to it, and I used to help her. It took me right back, when I heard you going out—though it was usually people coming in that used to wake me up. And I knew you’d be wet when you came back, and need help. Mum brought me up to think of everything like that. We used to have witches coming in on brooms at all hours of the night, poor things. Most of them were as wet as you—and much more frightened, of course. Hold the blanket down with your chin. That’s the best way to get it folded.”
“Why did your mum send you away to this school?” Nan asked. “You must have been such a help.”
Estelle’s bright face saddened. “She didn’t. The inquisitors sent me. They had a big campaign and broke up all our branch of the organization. My mum got caught. She’s in prison now, for helping witches. But”—Estelle’s soft brown eyes looked earnestly into Nan’s face—“please don’t say. I couldn’t bear anyone else to know. You’re the only one I’ve ever told.”
10
THE NEXT MORNING, Brian Wentworth did not get up. Simon threw a pillow at him as he lay there, but Brian did not stir.
“Wakey, wakey, Brian!” Simon said. “Get up, or I’ll strip your bed off.” When Brian still did not move, Simon advanced on his bed.
“Let him alone,” Charles said. “He was ill yesterday.”
“Anything you say, Charles,” said Simon. “Your word is my command.” And he pulled all the covers off Brian’s bed.
Brian was not in it. Instead, there was a line of three pillows, artfully overlapped to give the shape of a body. Everyone gathered around and stared. Ronald West bent dow
n and looked under the bed—as if he thought Brian might be there—and came up holding a piece of paper.
“Here,” he said. “This must have come off with the bedclothes. Take a look!”
Simon snatched the paper from him. Everyone else craned and pushed to see it too. It was written in capital letters, in ordinary blue ballpoint, and it said: HA HA. I HAVE GOT BRIAN WENTWORTH IN MY POWER. SIGNED, THE WITCH.
The slightly tense look on Simon’s face gave way to righteous concern. He had known at once that Brian’s disappearance had nothing to do with him. “We’re not going to panic,” he said. “Someone get the master on duty.”
There was instant emergency. Voices jabbered, rumors roared. Charles fetched Mr. Crossley, since everyone else seemed too astonished to think. After that, Mr. Crossley and monitors came and went, asking everyone when they had last seen Brian. People from the other dormitories crowded in the doorway, calling comments. Everyone was very eager to say something, but nothing very useful came out. A lot of people had noticed Brian was pale and cross-eyed the day before. Somebody said he had been ill and gone to the matron. A number of other people said he had come back later and seemed very busy writing. Everyone swore Brian had gone to bed as usual the night before.
Long before Mr. Crossley had sorted even this much out, Charles was tiptoeing hastily away downstairs. He felt sick. Up to last night, he had supposed Brian was trying to get himself invalided out of school. Now he knew better. Brian had run away, just as he had said he would. And he had taken the advice Charles had given him in the middle of the night before and confused his trail. But what had given Brian the idea of blaming the witch? Could it have been the shoes, and the sight of Charles muttering over some hairs from Simon’s comb? Charles was fairly sure it was.
As Charles pushed through the boys in the corridor, he heard the words “witch” and “Nan Pilgrim” coming from all sides. Fine, as long as they went on blaming Nan. But would they? Charles took a look at his burned finger as he went down the stairs. The transparent juicy cushion of blister on it was fatter than ever. It hurts to be burned. Charles went the rest of the way down at a crazy gallop. He too remembered Brian scribbling and scribbling during devvy. Brian must have written pages. If there was one word about Charles Morgan in those pages, he was going to make sure no one else saw them. He pelted along the corridors. He flung himself into the classroom, squawking for breath.
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