The Spook's Apprentice (7 page)

‘This doesn’t belong to me,’ I said. ‘It belongs to Mr Gregory.’

‘His last apprentice didn’t let that bother him,’ said the leader, moving his big face closer to mine. ‘He used to open the sack for us. If you’ve any sense you’ll do the same. If you won’t do it the easy way then it’ll have to be the hard way. But you won’t like that very much and it’ll all come down to the same thing in the end.’

The gang began to move in closer and I could feel someone behind me tugging at the sack. Even then, I wouldn’t let go and I stared back into the piggy eyes of the leader, trying hard not to blink.

At that moment something happened that took us all by surprise. There was a movement in the trees somewhere to my right and we all turned towards it.

There was a dark shape in the shadows, and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw that it was a girl. She was moving slowly towards us, but her approach was so silent that you could have heard a pin drop and so smooth that she seemed to be floating rather than walking. Then she stopped just on the edge of the tree shadows, as if she didn’t want to step into the sunlight.

‘Why don’t you leave him be?’ she demanded. It seemed like a question but the tone in her voice told me it was a command.

‘What’s it to you?’ asked the leader of the gang, jutting his chin forwards and bunching his fists.

‘Ain’t me you need to worry about,’ she answered from the shadows. ‘Lizzie’s back, and if you don’t do what I say, it’s her you’ll answer to.’

‘Lizzie?’ asked the lad, taking a step backwards.

‘Bony Lizzie. She’s my aunt. Don’t tell me you ain’t heard of her...’

Have you ever felt time slow so much that it almost appears to stop? Ever listened to a clock when the next tick seems to take for ever to follow the last tock? Well, it was just like that until, very suddenly, the girl hissed loudly through her clenched teeth. Then she spoke again.

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Be off with you! Be gone, be quick or be dead!’

The effect on the gang was immediate. I glimpsed the expression on some of their faces and saw that they weren’t just afraid. They were terrified and close to panic. Their leader turned on his heels and immediately fled down the hill with the others close behind him.

I didn’t know why they were so scared but I felt like running too. The girl was staring at me with wide eyes and I didn’t feel able to control my limbs properly. I felt like a mouse paralysed by the stare of a stoat about to pounce at any moment.

I forced my left foot to move and slowly turned my body towards the trees to follow the direction my nose was pointing, but I was still gripping the Spook’s sack. Whoever she was, I still wasn’t going to give it up.

‘Ain’t you going to run as well?’ she asked me.

I shook my head but my mouth was very dry and I couldn’t trust myself to try and speak. I knew the words would come out wrong.

She was probably about my own age - if anything slightly younger. Her face was nice enough, for she had large brown eyes, high cheekbones and long black hair. She wore a black dress tied tightly at the waist with a piece of white string. But as I took all this in, I suddenly noticed something that troubled me.

The girl was wearing pointy shoes, and immediately I remembered the Spook’s warning. But I stood my ground, determined not to run like the others.

‘Ain’t you going to thank me?’ she asked. ‘Be nice to get some thanks.’

‘Thanks,’ I said lamely, just managing to get the word out first time.

‘Well, that’s a start,’ she said. ‘But to thank me properly, you need to give me something, don’t you? A cake and an apple will do for now. It ain’t much to ask. There’s plenty in the sack and Old Gregory won’t notice, and if he does, he won’t say anything.’

I was shocked to hear her call the Spook ‘Old Gregory’. I knew he wouldn’t like being called that and it told me two things. Firstly, the girl had little respect for him, and secondly, she wasn’t the least bit afraid of him. Back where I came from, most people shivered even at the thought that the Spook might be in the neighbourhood.

‘I’m sorry.’ I said, ‘but I can’t do that. They’re not mine to give.’

She glared at me hard then and didn’t speak for a long time. I thought at one point that she was going to hiss at me through her teeth. I stared back at her, trying not to blink, until at last a faint smile lit up her face and she spoke again.

‘Then I’ll have to settle for a promise.’

‘A promise?’ I asked, wondering what she meant.

‘A promise to help me just as I helped you. I don’t need any help right now, but perhaps one day I might.’

‘That’s fine,’ I told her. ‘If you ever need any help in the future then just ask.’

‘What’s your name?’ she asked, giving me a really broad smile.

‘Tom Ward.’

‘Well, my name’s Alice and I live yonder,’ she said, pointing back through the trees. ‘I’m Bony Lizzie’s favourite niece.’

Bony Lizzie was a strange name but it would have been rude to mention it. Whoever she was, her name had been enough to scare the village lads.

That was the end of our conversation. We both turned then to go our separate ways, but as we walked away, Alice called over her shoulder, ‘Take care now. You don’t want to end up like Old Gregory’s last apprentice.’

‘What happened to him?’ I asked.

‘Better ask Old Gregory!’ she shouted, as she disappeared back into the trees.

When I got back, the Spook checked the contents of the sack carefully, ticking things off from a list.

‘Did you have any trouble down in the village?’ he asked, when he’d finally finished.

‘Some lads followed me up the hill and asked me to open the sack but I told them no,’ I said.

‘That was very brave of you,’ said the Spook. ‘Next time it won’t do any harm to let them have a few apples and cakes. Life’s hard enough as it is, but some of them come from very poor families. I always order extra in case they ask for some.’

I felt annoyed then. If only he’d told me that in advance! ‘I didn’t like to do it without asking you first,’ I said.

The Spook raised his eyebrows. ‘Did you want to give them a few apples and cakes?’

‘I don’t like being bullied,’ I said, ‘but some of them did look really hungry.’

‘Then next time trust your instincts and use your initiative,’ said the Spook. ‘Trust the voice inside you. It’s rarely wrong. A spook depends a lot on that because it can sometimes mean the difference between life and death. So that’s another thing we need to find out about you. Whether or not your instincts can be relied on.’

He paused, staring at me hard, his green eyes searching my face. ‘Any trouble with girls?’ he asked suddenly.

It was because I was still annoyed that I didn’t give a straight answer to his question.

‘No trouble at all,’ I answered.

It wasn’t a lie because Alice had helped me, which was the opposite of trouble. Still, I knew he really meant had I met any girls and I knew I should have told him about her. Especially with her wearing pointy shoes.

I made lots of mistakes as an apprentice and that was my second serious one - not telling the Spook the whole truth.

The first, even more serious one was making the promise to Alice.

After that my life settled into a busy routine. The Spook taught me fast and made me write until my wrist ached and my eyes stung.

One afternoon he took me to the far end of the village, beyond the last stone cottage to a small circle of willow trees, which are called ‘withy trees’ in the County. It was a gloomy spot and there, hanging from a branch, was a rope. I looked up and saw a big brass bell.

‘When somebody needs help,’ said the Spook, ‘they don’t come up to the house. Nobody comes unless they’re invited. I’m strict about that. They come down here and ring that bell. Then we go to them.’

The trouble was that even after weeks had gone by, nobody came to ring the bell, and I only ever got to go further than the western garden when it was time to fetch the weekly provisions from the village. I was lonely too, missing my family, so it was a good job the Spook kept me busy - that meant I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I always went to bed tired and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

The lessons were the most interesting part of each day but I didn’t learn much about ghasts, ghosts and witches. The Spook had told me that the main topic in an apprentice’s first year was boggarts, together with such subjects as botany, which meant learning all about plants, some of which were really useful as medicines or could be eaten if you had no other food. But my lessons weren’t just writing. Some of the work was just as hard and physical as anything I’d done back home on our farm.

It started on a warm, sunny morning, when the Spook told me to put away my notebook and led the way towards his southern garden. He gave me two things to carry: a spade and a long measuring rod.

‘Free boggarts travel down leys,’ he explained. ‘But sometimes something goes wrong. It can be the result of a storm or maybe even an earthquake. In the County there hasn’t been a serious earthquake in living memory but that doesn’t matter, because leys are all interconnected and something happening to one, even a thousand miles away, can disturb all the others. Then boggarts get stuck in the same place for years and we call them "naturally bound". Often they can’t move more than a few dozen paces in any direction and they cause little trouble. Not unless you happen to get too close to one. Sometimes, though, they can be stuck in awkward places, close to a house or even inside one. Then you might need to move the boggart from there and artificially bind it elsewhere.’

‘What’s a ley?’ I asked.

‘Not everybody agrees, lad,’ he told me. ‘Some think they’re just ancient paths that crisscross the land, the paths our forefathers walked in ancient times when men were real men and darkness knew its place. Health was better, lives were longer and everyone was happy and content.’

‘What happened?’

‘Ice moved down from the north and the earth grew cold for thousands of years,’ the Spook explained. ‘It was so difficult to survive that men forgot everything they’d learned. The old knowledge was unimportant. Keeping warm and eating was all that mattered. When the ice finally pulled back, the survivors were hunters dressed in animal skins. They’d forgotten how to grow crops and husband animals. Darkness was all-powerful.

‘Well, it’s better now, although we still have a long way to go. All that’s left of those times are the leys, but the truth is they’re more than just paths. Leys are really lines of power far beneath the earth. Secret invisible roads that free boggarts can use to travel at great speed. It’s these free boggarts that cause the most trouble. When they set up home in a new location, often they’re not welcome. Not being welcome makes them angry. They play tricks - sometimes dangerous tricks - and that means work for us. Then they need to be artificially bound in a pit. Just like the one that you’re going to dig now . . .

‘This is a good place,’ he said, pointing at the ground near a big, ancient oak tree. ‘I think there should be enough space between the roots.’

The Spook gave me a measuring rod so that I could make the pit exactly six feet long, six feet deep and three feet wide. Even in the shade it was too warm to be digging and it took me hours and hours to get it right because the Spook was a perfectionist.

After digging the pit, I had to prepare a smelly mixture of salt, iron filings and a special sort of glue made from bones.

‘Salt can burn a boggart,’ said the Spook. ‘Iron, on the other hand, earths things: just as lightning finds its way to earth and loses its power, iron can sometimes bleed away the strength and substance of things that haunt the dark. It can end the mischief of troublesome boggarts. Used together, salt and iron form a barrier that a boggart can’t cross. In fact salt and iron can be useful in lots of situations.’

After stirring the mixture up in a big metal bucket, I used a big brush to line the inside of the pit. It was like painting but harder work, and the coating had to be perfect in order to stop even the craftiest boggart from escaping.

‘Do a thorough job, lad,’ the Spook told me. ‘A boggart can escape through a hole no bigger than a pinhead.’

Of course, as soon as the pit was completed to the Spook’s satisfaction, I had to fill it in and begin again. He had me digging two practice pits a week, which was hard, sweaty work and took up a lot of my time. It was a bit scary too because I was working near pits that contained real boggarts, and even in daylight it was a creepy place. I noticed that the Spook never went too far away though, and he always seemed watchful and alert, telling me you could never take chances with boggarts even when they were bound.

The Spook also told me that I’d need to know every inch of the County - all its towns and villages and the quickest route between any two points. The trouble was that although the Spook said he had lots of maps upstairs in his library, it seemed I always had to do things the hard way, so he started me off by making me draw a map of my own.

At its centre was his house and gardens and it had to include the village and the nearest of the fells. The idea was that it would gradually get bigger to include more and more of the surrounding countryside. But drawing wasn’t my strong point, and as I said, the Spook was a perfectionist so the map took a long time to grow. It was only then that he started to show me his own maps, but he made me spend more time carefully folding them up afterwards than actually studying them.

I also began to keep a diary. The Spook gave me another notebook for this, telling me for the umpteenth time that I needed to record the past so that I could learn from it. I didn’t write in it every day, though; sometimes I was too tired and sometimes my wrist was aching too much from scribbling at speed in my other notebook, while trying to keep up with what the Spook said.

Then, one morning at breakfast, when I’d been staying with the Spook for just one month, he asked, ‘What do you think so far, lad?’

I wondered if he were talking about the breakfast. Perhaps there’d be a second course to make up for the bacon, which had been a bit burnt that morning. So I just shrugged. I didn’t want to offend the boggart, which was probably listening.

‘Well, it’s a hard job and I wouldn’t blame you for deciding to give it up now,’ he said. ‘After the first month’s passed, I always give each new apprentice the chance to go home and think very carefully about whether he wants to carry on or not. Would you like to do the same?’

I did my best not to seem too eager but I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. The trouble was, the more I smiled the more miserable the Spook looked. I got the feeling that he wanted me to stay but I couldn’t wait to be off. The thought of seeing my family again and getting to taste Mam’s cooking seemed like a dream.

I left for home within the hour. ‘You’re a brave lad and your wits are sharp,’ he said to me at the gate. ‘You’ve passed your month’s trial so you can tell your dad that, if you want to carry on, I’ll be visiting him in the autumn to collect my ten guineas. You’ve the makings of a good apprentice, but it’s up to you, lad. If you don’t come back, then I’ll know you’ve decided against it. Otherwise I’ll expect you back within the week. Then I’ll give you five years’ training that’ll make you almost as good at the job as I am.’

I set off for home with a light heart. You see, I didn’t want to tell the Spook, but the moment he’d given me the chance to go home and maybe never come back, I’d already made up my mind to do just that. It was a terrible job. From what the Spook had told me, apart from the loneliness, it was dangerous and terrifying. Nobody really cared whether you lived or died. They just wanted you to get rid of whatever was plaguing them but didn’t think for a second about what it might cost you.

The Spook had described how he’d once been half killed by a boggart. It had changed, in the blink of an eye, from a hall-knocker to a stone-chucker and had nearly brained him with a rock as big as a blacksmith’s fist. He said that he hadn’t even been paid yet but expected to get the money next spring. Well, next spring was a long time off, so what good was that? As I set off for home, it seemed to me that I’d be better off working on the farm.

The trouble was, it was nearly two days’ journey and walking gave me a lot of time to think. I remembered how bored I’d sometimes been on the farm. Could I really put up with working there for the rest of my life? Next I started to think about what Mam would say. She’d been really set on me being the Spook’s apprentice and if I stopped I’d really let her down. So the hardest part would be telling her and watching her reaction.

By nightfall on the first day of my journey home, I’d finished all the cheese the Spook had given me for the trip. So the next day I only stopped once, to bathe my feet in a stream, reaching home just before the evening milking.

As I opened the gate to the yard, Dad was heading for the cow shed. When he saw me, his face lit up with  a broad smile. I offered to help with the milking so we  could talk but he told me to go in right away and speak to my mam.

‘She’s missed you, lad. You’ll be a sight for sore eyes.’

Patting me on the back, he went off to do his milking, but before I’d taken half a dozen paces Jack came out of the barn and made straight for me.

‘What brings you back so soon?’ he asked. He seemed a little bit cool. Well, to be honest, he was more cold than cool. His face was sort of twisted up, as if he were trying to scowl and grin at the same time.

‘The Spook’s sent me home for a few days. I’ve to make up my mind whether to carry on or not.’

‘So what will you do?’

‘I’m going to talk to Mam about it.’

‘No doubt you’ll get your own way as usual,’ Jack said.

By now Jack was definitely scowling and it made me feel that something had happened while I’d been away. Why else was he suddenly so unfriendly? Was it because he didn’t want me coming home?

‘And I can’t believe you took Dad’s tinderbox,’ he said.

‘He gave to me,’ I said. ‘He wanted me to have it.’

‘He offered it, but that didn’t mean you had to take it. The trouble with you is that you only think about yourself. Think of poor Dad. He loved that tinderbox.’

I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to get into an argument. I knew he was wrong. Dad had wanted me to have the tinderbox, I was sure of it.

‘While I’m back, I’ll be able to help out,’ I said, trying to change the subject.

‘If you really want to earn your keep, then feed the pigs!’ he called, as he turned to walk away. It was a job neither of us liked much. They were big, hairy, smelly pigs and always so hungry that it was never safe to turn your back on them.

Despite what Jack had said, I was still glad to be home. As I crossed the yard I glanced up at the house. Mam’s climbing roses covered most of the wall at the back, and always did well even though they faced north. Now they were just shooting, but by mid-June they’d be covered in red blossoms.

The back door was always jamming because the house had once been struck by lightning. The door had caught fire and had been replaced, but the frame was still slightly warped, so I had to push hard to force it open. It was worth it because the first thing I saw was Mam’s smiling face.

She was sitting in her old rocking chair in the far corner of the kitchen, a place where the setting sun couldn’t reach. If the light was too bright, it hurt her eyes. Mam preferred winter to summer and night to day.

She was glad to see me all right, and at first I tried to delay telling her I’d come home to stay. I put on a brave face and pretended to be happy but she saw right through me. I could never hide anything from her.