“Thanks, Meg. That was really good,” I told her.
She didn’t reply and seemed to be asleep. It was something she often did, fall asleep in her rocking chair near the hearth.
I didn’t know what to do now. I’d hoped to speak to my master about Morgan, but he was clearly not well enough to be bothered with it. I didn’t want to trouble him and make him worse. Perhaps while he was sleeping I could just take a look at this grimoire; check it was where Morgan had said. Maybe something in there would help me to decide what to do. One thing was clear: with my master so ill and Alice gone, I was on my own, and it was down to me to do the right thing by my dad. He was all that mattered, and I had to do something to stop him from suffering at the hands of Morgan. I would start by looking for the grimoire.
The Spook was upstairs sleeping, and I might not get a better chance to look for it. One part of me felt bad about even thinking of taking it without telling the Spook. But there would be a time for explanations later. Dad was all that mattered now. I couldn’t bear the thought of him being tortured by Morgan again.
But when I started to leave the kitchen, Meg suddenly opened her eyes and leaned forward to poke the fire. “I’m just going up to see Mr. Gregory,” I told her.
“No, Tom, we don’t want to disturb him yet,” she said. “You just sit by the fire and warm yourself after that long walk you’ve had in the cold.”
“Well, I’ll just go and get my notebook from the study first,” I said.
But I went into the parlor rather than the study. If the Spook was still in bed, Meg hadn’t had her herb tea yet. I needed her to sleep for a while so that I could hunt for the grimoire, and herb tea was the easiest way to do it. So I took down the big brown glass jar from the cupboard and poured three-quarters of an inch of the mixture into a cup. Then I went into the kitchen and began to heat the water.
“What’s this?” Meg asked with a smile as I held the cup toward her.
“It’s herb tea, Meg. Drink it down. It’ll stop the cold from getting into your bones.”
The only warning I got was when the smile slipped from her face. Meg dashed the cup from my hand, and it smashed to pieces on the kitchen flags. Then she got to her feet, gripped my wrist, and dragged me close. I tried to pull away, but she was too strong. I felt that she could snap my arm without trying too hard.
“Liar! Liar!” she shouted, her face only inches from my own. “I’d hoped for better from you, but you’re no better than John Gregory! Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance. You’ve proved yourself to be just the same. You’d take away my memory, too, wouldn’t you, boy? But now I remember everything. I know what I was and I know what I am!”
With our faces almost touching, Meg sniffed at me very loudly. “I know what you are, too,” she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper now. “I know what you’re thinking. I know your darkest secret thoughts, the ones you couldn’t even tell your own mother.”
Her eyes were staring hard into mine. They weren’t points of fire like Mother Malkin’s had been when we’d come face-to-face in the spring, but they seemed to be growing larger. She was a lamia witch and her body was stronger than mine, and now her mind was beginning to control me, too.
“I know what you could be one day, Tom Ward,” she whispered, “but that day’s still a long way off. You’re just a boy, while I’ve walked this earth more years than I care to remember. So don’t try any of John Gregory’s tricks on me, because I know them all. Every last one!”
She spun me around so that I was facing away from her and let go of my arm, quickly transferring her grip to my neck.
“Please, Meg! I didn’t mean any harm,” I pleaded. “I wanted to help you. I’d talked to Alice about it. She wanted to help you, too—”
“It’s easy to say that now. Was giving me that filthy mixture to drink the way to help me? No, I don’t think so. No more of your lies, or it’ll be the worse for you!”
“But they’re not lies, Meg. Remember, Alice comes from a family of witches. She understood you and really felt sorry for what was happening. I was going to speak to Mr. Gregory about you and—”
“Right, boy! I’ve heard enough excuses!” snapped Meg. “It’s down to the cellar with you. Let’s see how you like it down there in the dark. It’s just what you deserve. I want you to know what I went through. I didn’t sleep the whole time, you see. I kept waking up to spend long hours thinking, alone in the dark. Too weak to move, too weak to climb to my feet—trying desperately to remember all that you and John Gregory would like me to forget—I could still think and feel, knowing that it would be long, tedious, lonely months before anybody came to the door to let me out. . . .”
At first I struggled, trying my best to resist, but it was useless: she was just too strong. Still gripping me by the neck, she marched me down the cellar steps, my feet hardly touching the floor, until we reached the iron gate. She had the key, and we were soon beyond it and descending deeper underground.
She hadn’t bothered with a candle, and although I can find my way in the dark a lot better than most people, at each corner it grew darker and more difficult to see. The thought of the cellar below terrified me. I remembered her sister, the feral lamia witch, still imprisoned in the pit; I didn’t want to be anywhere near her. But to my relief, when we turned the third corner, she brought me to a halt by the three doors.
With another key she opened the left-hand door, thrust me inside, and locked it behind me. Then I heard her unlock the cell next to mine and go inside. She didn’t stay very long. Soon that door slammed shut, and she began to climb the steps. After a few moments there was the sound of the iron gate clanging shut; more steps, growing fainter and fainter; and then silence.
I waited a few moments in case she came back for some reason, then fumbled in my pockets for the stub of candle and my tinderbox. Seconds later the candle was alight, and I looked around at my cell. It was small, no more than eight paces by four, with a heap of straw in the corner to serve for a bed. The walls were built from blocks of stone, and the door was constructed of sturdy oak, with a square inspection hole near the top sealed with four vertical iron bars.
I sat down on the stone floor in the corner to think things through. What had happened while I’d been away? I felt certain that the Spook was now in the cell next to mine, the one where Meg spent her summers. Why else would Meg have gone in there? But how had the Spook ended up in Meg’s power? He still hadn’t been well when I’d left for home. Maybe he’d forgotten to give Meg her herb tea and she’d recovered her memory? Perhaps she’d put something in his food or drink—the same thing he’d been using all those years to keep her docile, most likely.
Not only that—there’d been Alice’s influence. She’d kept chatting to Meg, talking to her about coming from a family of witches. Sometimes they’d whispered together. What had they been discussing? If Alice had had her way, Meg’s dose of herb tea would have been reduced. Well, I didn’t blame Alice for what had happened, but her presence in the Spook’s house certainly wouldn’t have helped the situation.
When I’d returned, Meg had only been pretending to be confused and had been playing a game with me. Had she really been giving me what she’d called a chance? If I hadn’t tried to give her the herb tea, would she have treated me any differently? And then it hit me. When I got back to Anglezarke, I’d been so wrapped up in my thoughts of Morgan and Dad, I’d been completely blind to the evidence—signs I could see only too clearly now. Meg had called me Tom, not Billy, for the first time ever. And she’d remembered about my dad. Why hadn’t I picked up on that at the time? I should have been on my guard. I’d let my heart rule my head, and now the whole County was in danger. A lamia witch free to roam once more, and neither a spook nor an apprentice to stop her. What was done was done, but somehow I had to put it right.
There was good news and bad news, but most of it was bad. Meg had sniffed me out using her powers as a witch. She knew a lot about me, but she hadn’t bother
ed to search me or she’d have found the tinderbox and candle. She’d have found the key, too—the key that could open most doors as long as they weren’t too complex. So that was the good news. I could get out of my cell. I could open the door to the Spook’s cell, too.
The bad news was that the key wouldn’t be good enough to get me through the gate. Otherwise the Spook wouldn’t have kept a special one on top of the bookcase in the library. And Meg had that key now. Even if I could get us both out of our cells, we were still trapped in the cellar. So what I needed to do now was clear enough. I had to talk to the Spook. My master would know what to do for the best.
So I used the key to open the door of my cell. It didn’t make much noise, but the cell door seemed to stick and, despite my best efforts, jerked open, making a noise that echoed up and down the steps. I hoped Meg would be upstairs by the kitchen fire and wouldn’t have heard. Taking the candle, I tiptoed out into the corridor and held it up to the bars of the Spook’s cell. I peered inside but couldn’t see much. There was a bed in the corner and a dark bundle on top of it. Was it the Spook?
“Mr. Gregory! Mr. Gregory!” I called through the bars, putting urgency into my voice while still trying to keep its volume as low as possible.
A deep groan came from the bundle, and it moved slowly. It sounded like the Spook, all right. I was just going to call again when I heard a sudden sound from the steps below. I turned and listened. For a moment there was silence. Then I heard it again. Something was moving up the steps toward me.
A rat? No, it sounded too large for that. Suddenly it stopped. Was I mistaken? Had I just imagined the sound? Fear can play tricks on the mind. As the Spook always says, it’s important to recognize the difference between waking and dreaming.
Without realizing it, I’d been holding my breath. Now, when I breathed out, the movement up the steps began again. I couldn’t see around the corner, so I could only judge what it was by the sounds it was making. It wasn’t like something dragging itself up, so it couldn’t be a dead witch that had somehow managed to get free. It wasn’t the sound of boots, so it couldn’t be a ghast or a ghost coming up the steps, or even a human being who’d been hiding down there for some reason. It was a sound I’d never heard in my life before.
Something was moving, then stopping; moving again, then halting just as quickly. Something that was scuttling upward on more than just two legs! What else could it be? It had to be the feral lamia witch! After years in that pit, she’d have a frantic need for human blood. And she was coming for me!
In a panic, without thinking, I ran back into my cell, pulled the door closed, and locked it quickly. Next I blew out the candle—otherwise she would see the light and be attracted to it. But was I even safe inside a locked cell? If the witch had managed to escape from the pit, she must have been able to bend the bars. Then I realized that Meg might simply have released her sister from the pit, and for a moment I felt a bit better. But I didn’t even get time to sigh with relief. You see, I remembered something that the Spook had said about the gate:
“The iron would stop most of ’em getting past this point. . . .”
The lamia witch was the most dangerous thing in the cellar. So, if she’d a mind to escape, maybe even the iron trellis gate wouldn’t be enough to stop her for long! As for the bars of my cell, they didn’t bear thinking about. My only hope was that the witch was still relatively weak after being in the pit for so long.
I kept perfectly still and listened, doing my best to breathe quietly. I could hear her approaching, scuttling and halting, scuttling nearer and nearer. I pressed myself back into the corner and stopped breathing altogether.
Something touched the door lightly. The next contact with the wood was stronger, and there was a scratching sound, as if sharp claws were biting in, trying to get a purchase. It was as if something was clawing its way up the door. I’d run into my own cell without thinking, and now I wished I’d locked myself in the other cell with the Spook. I might have been able to wake him up and ask him what to do.
It was dark. Very dark. So dark that, inside my cell, I couldn’t tell where the door ended and the walls on either side began. But the oblong, dissected by the four vertical bars, was slightly paler than its surroundings, so there had to be some light on the stairs, shedding a faint illumination of the wall beyond my cell.
A shape moved across the oblong. It was in silhouette, but I could see enough to tell that it was something like a hand. I heard it grip the bars. But it wasn’t as if flesh and muscle came into contact with them. There was a rasp, almost as if a file had scraped against iron, followed by an explosive hiss of anger and pain. The lamia witch had touched iron, and the hurt she was suffering would be severe. Only her will was holding her there. Next, something big moved up in front of the bars, like the disk of a dark moon eclipsing the pale light beyond. It had to be the witch’s head. She was peering at me through the bars, but it was too dark to see her eyes!
There was another rasp, and the door groaned and creaked. I trembled with fear. I knew what was happening. She was trying to bend the bars or pull them right out of the wooden door.
If I’d had my staff of rowan wood I could have jabbed at the witch through the bars and perhaps driven her off. But I had nothing. My silver chain was in my bag, but it was no use to me there. I’d nothing here that I could use to defend myself.
The door groaned and creaked as the pressure on it grew, and I heard it start to buckle. The witch hissed again and made a snuffling, croaking sound. She was eager to get inside, desperate to drink my blood.
But to my relief, there was a sudden clang of metal from up the steps, and the lamia let go of the bars and dropped out of sight. I heard the echo of approaching footsteps, and candlelight flickered on the wall beyond the bars.
“Back! Back!” I heard Meg shout from beyond the door, followed by the sound of the feral lamia scuttling away down the steps.
Next there was the flicker of candlelight and the click of pointy shoes following the creature down. I stayed where I was, crouched in the corner. After a while the footsteps approached again, and I heard a bucket being placed on the floor and a key turning in the lock of my cell door.
Just in time, before Meg opened the door, I pushed my candle stub and tinderbox back into my pockets. Now I was glad that I hadn’t locked myself in the Spook’s cell, or she’d have known about my key.
Meg stood framed in the doorway, holding up her candle. With her other hand, she beckoned me to her. I didn’t move. I was too scared.
“Come here, boy,” she said, chuckling to herself. “Don’t worry. I won’t bite!”
I came to my knees, but my legs felt too wobbly to allow me to stand.
“Will you come to me, boy? Or do I have to come to you?” Meg asked. “The first is far easier and less painful.”
This time terror brought me to my feet. She might be “domestic,” but Meg was still a lamia witch whose favorite food was probably blood. The herb tea had made her forget that. But she knew exactly what she was now. And she knew what she wanted. There was compulsion in her voice, a power that sapped my will and made me cross the cell to the open door.
“It’s lucky for you that I decided to feed Marcia when I did,” she said, pointing down to the bucket.
I looked down. It was empty. I don’t know what had been inside it, but there was a film of blood in the bottom.
“Almost left it until later, but then I remembered how desperate she’d be to get at you, what with you being so young. John Gregory doesn’t have half the attraction,” she said with a thin, cruel smile, nodding toward the next cell and confirming for me that the Spook really was in there.
“He really cares about you,” I told Meg desperately. “He always has. So please don’t treat him like this! In fact, he loves you. He really loves you!” I said, repeating the words again. “He actually wrote it down in one of his notebooks. I wasn’t meant to find it, but I did and read it anyway. It’s the truth.”
How could I put her into the pit, when I realized that I loved her better than my own soul.”
“Love!” sneered Meg. “What does a man like that know about love?”
“It was when you first met and he was about to put you into a pit because it was his duty. He couldn’t do it, Meg! He couldn’t do it because he loved you too much. It went against everything he’d been taught and believed, but he still saved you from the pit! He only gave you the tea because there was no other choice. The pit or tea—he chose what he thought was best, because he cares about you so much.”
Meg gave a hiss of anger and peered down into the bucket as if she wanted to lick it clean or something. “Well, that was a long time ago, and he certainly has a funny way of showing it,” she said. “Perhaps now he’ll understand just what it’s like to be locked down here half the year. Because there’s no hurry now. I’m going to take a long time thinking over just what to do with him. As for you, you’re just a boy, and I don’t blame you that much. You don’t know any better because that’s how he’s trained you. And it’s a hard life. A difficult trade.
“I’d let you go,” she went on. “But you wouldn’t be able to leave it there, would you? It’s the way you’ve been made. The way you’ve been brought up. You’d go for help. You’d want to rescue him. Folks round here don’t think much of me. Perhaps I’ve given them good reason in the past, but most deserved what they got. They’d come after me in a mob. Too many for me to do anything about. No, if I let you go, it could be the end of me. But I will promise you one thing. I won’t give you to my sister. You don’t deserve that.”
So saying, she gestured that I should move back; then she closed the door and locked it again.
“I’ll bring something for you to eat later,” she said through the bars. “Maybe by then I’ll have thought what’s the best thing to do about you.”
The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection Page 54