Witch Week (17 page)

T
HE 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 down 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.

Brian’s desk was open. Nirupam was bending over it. He did not seem in the least surprised to see Charles. “Brian has been very eloquent,” he said. “Come and see.”

Behind the raised lid of the desk, Nirupam had lined up six exercise books, each of them open to a double page of hurried blue scrawl.
Help, help, help, help,
Charles read in the first.
The witch has the Evil Eye on me. HELP. I am being dragged away I know not where. HELP. My mind is in thrall. Nameless deeds are being forced upon me. HELP. The world is turning gray. The spell is working. Help
. . . And so on, for the whole two pages.

“There’s yards of it!” said Charles.

“I know,” said Nirupam, opening Brian’s French book. “This is full of it too.”

“Does it give names?” Charles asked tensely.

“Not so far,” said Nirupam.

Charles was not going to take Nirupam’s word for that. He picked up each book in turn and read the scrawl through.
Help. Wild chanting and horrible smells fill my ears. HELP. I can FEEL MYSELF GOING. The witch’s will is strong. I must obey. Gray humming and horrible words. HELP. My spirit is being dragged from TIMBUKTU to UTTAR PRADESH. To utter destruction I mean. Help
. . . It went on like this for all six books. Enough of it was in capitals for Charles to be quite sure that Brian had written the note under his bed himself.

After that, he read each of the rest of Brian’s books as Nirupam finished with it. It was all the same kind of thing. To Charles’s relief, Brian named no names. But there was still Brian’s journal, at the bottom of the pile.

“If he’s said anything definite, it will be in this,” Nirupam said, picking up the journal. Charles reached out for it too. If necessary, he was going to force it out of Nirupam’s hands by witchcraft. Or was it better just to make all the pages blank? But did he dare do either? His hand hesitated.

As Charles hesitated, they heard Mr. Crossley’s voice out in the corridor. Charles and Nirupam frantically crammed the books back into Brian’s desk and shut it. They raced to their own desks, sat down, got out books, and pretended to be busy finishing devvy from the night before.

“You boys should be going along to breakfast now,” Mr. Crossley said, when he came in. “Go along.”

Both of them had to go, without a chance of looking at Brian’s journal. Charles wondered why Nirupam looked so frustrated. But he was too frightened on his own account to bother much about Nirupam’s feelings.

In the corridor outside the dining hall, Mr. Wentworth rushed past them, looking even more harrowed than usual. Inside the dining hall, the rumor was going around that the police had just arrived.

“You wait,” Simon said knowingly. “The inquisitor will be here before dinner time. You’ll see.”

Nirupam slid into a seat beside Nan. “Brian has written in all his school books about a witch putting a spell on him,” he murmured to her.

Nan hardly needed this to show her the trouble she was in. Karen and Delia had already asked her several times what she had done to Brian. And Theresa had added, not looking at Nan, “Some people can’t leave people alone, can they?”

“But he didn’t name any names,” Nirupam muttered, also not looking at Nan.

Brian didn’t need to name names, Nan thought desperately. Everyone else would do that for him. And, if that was not enough, Estelle knew she had been out on the broomstick last night. She looked around for Estelle, but Estelle seemed to be avoiding her. She was at another table. At that, the last traces of witchy inner confidence left Nan completely. For once in her life, she had no appetite for breakfast. Charles was not much better. Whatever he tried to eat, the fat blister on his finger seemed to get in the way.

At the end of breakfast, another rumor went around: The police had sent for tracker dogs.

A short while after this, Miss Hodge arrived, to find the school in an uproar. It took her some time to find out what had happened, since Mr. Crossley was nowhere to be found. When Miss Phillips finally told her, Miss Hodge was delighted. Brian Wentworth had vanished! That is, Miss Hodge thought hastily, it was very sad and worrying of course, but it did give her a real excuse to attract Mr. Wentworth’s attention again. Yesterday had been most frustrating. After Mr. Wentworth had brushed aside her generous apology over Charles Morgan, she had not been able to think of any other move towards getting him to marry her. But this was ideal. She could go to Mr. Wentworth and be terribly sympathetic. She could enter into his sorrow. The only difficulty was that Mr. Wentworth was not to be found, any more than Mr. Crossley. It seemed that they were both with the police in Miss Cadwallader’s study.

As everyone went into the hall for assembly, they could see a police van in the quadrangle. Several healthy Alsatians were getting out of it, with their pink tongues draped over their large white fangs in a way that suggested they could hardly wait to get on and hunt something. A number of faces turned pale. There was a lot of nervous giggling.

“It doesn’t matter if the dogs don’t find anything,” Simon could be heard explaining. “The inquisitor will simply run his witch-detector over everyone in the class, and they’ll find the witch that way.”

To Nan’s relief, Estelle came pushing along the line and stood next to her. “Estelle—!” Nan began violently.

“Not now,” Estelle whispered. “Wait for the singing.”

Neither Mr. Wentworth nor Miss Cadwallader came into assembly. Mr. Brubeck and Mr. Towers, who sat in the main chairs instead, did not explain about that, and neither of them mentioned Brian. This seemed to make it all much more serious. Mr. Towers chose his favorite hymn. It was, to Nan’s misery, “He Who Would Valiant Be.” This hymn always caused Theresa to look at Nan and giggle, when it came to “To be a pilgrim.” Nan had to wait for Theresa to do that before she dared to speak to Estelle, and, she thought, Theresa’s giggle was rather nastier than usual.

“Estelle,” Nan whispered, as soon as everyone had started the second verse. “Estelle, you don’t think I went out—last night, the way I did—because of Brian, do you? I swear I didn’t.”

“I know you didn’t,” Estelle whispered back. “What would anyone want Brian
for,
anyway?”

“But everyone thinks I did! What shall I
do
?” Nan whispered back.

“It’s PE second lesson. I’ll show you then,” said Estelle.

Charles was also whispering under cover of the singing, to Nirupam. “What are witch-detectors? Do they work?”

“Machines in black boxes,” Nirupam said breathily at his hymn book. “And they always find a witch with them.”

Mr. Wentworth had talked about witch-detectors too. So, Charles thought, if the rumor was right and the inquisitor got here before lunchtime, today was the end of Charles. Charles hated Brian. Selfish beast. Yes, all right, he had been selfish too, but Brian was even worse. There was only one thing to do now, and that was to run away as well. But those tracker dogs made that nearly impossible.

When they got to the classroom, Brian’s desk had been taken away. Charles looked at the empty space in horror. Fingerprints! he thought. Nirupam had gone quite yellow.

“They took it to give the dogs the scent,” said Dan Smith. He added thoughtfully, “They’re trained to tear people to pieces, those police dogs. I wonder if they’ll tear Brian up, or just the witch.”

Charles looked at the blister on his finger and realized that burning was not the only thing that hurt. His first thought had been to run away during break. Now he decided to go in PE, next lesson. He wished there were not a whole lesson in between.

That lesson seemed to last about a year. And for most of that lesson, policemen were continually going past the windows with dogs on leads. Back and forth they went. Wherever Brian had gone, they seemed to be finding it hard to pick up his scent.

By this time, Nan’s hands were shaking so that she could hardly hold her pen. Thanks to last night, she knew exactly why Brian had left no scent. It was that double-dealing broomstick. It must have flown Brian out before it came and woke her up. Nan was sure of it. She could have taken the police to the exact spot where Brian was. That was no bonfire she had smelled over Larwood Forest last night. It had been Brian’s campfire. The broomstick had brought her right over the spot and then realized its mistake. That was why it had gotten so agitated and tried to fly away backwards. She was so angry with Brian for getting her blamed that she wished she really could tell them where he was. But the moment she did that, she proved that she was a witch and incriminated Mr. Wentworth into the bargain. Oh, it was too bad of Brian! Nan just hoped Estelle could think of some kind of rescue before someone accused her, and she started accusing Brian and Mr. Wentworth.

Just before the end of that lesson, the dogs must have found some kind of scent. When the girls walked around the outside of the school on their way to the girls’ locker room, to change for PE, there was not a policeman or a dog in sight. As the line of girls went past the shrubbery, Estelle gently took hold of Nan’s arm and pulled her towards the bushes. Nan let herself be pulled. She did not know if she was more relieved or more terrified. It was a little early in the day to find seniors in the shrubbery, but even so, surely somebody would notice.

“We have to go into town,” Estelle whispered, as they pushed among the wet bushes. “To the Old Gate House.”

“Why?” Nan asked, thrusting her way after Estelle.

“Because,” Estelle whispered over her shoulder, “the lady there runs the Larwood branch of the witches’ escape route.”

They came out into the grass beside the huge laurel bush. Nan looked from Estelle’s scared face to Estelle’s trim blazer and school skirt. Then she looked down at her own plump shape. Different as they were, they were both obviously in Larwood House school uniforms. “But if someone sees us in town, they’ll report us to Miss Cadwallader.”

“I was hoping,” Estelle whispered, “that you might be able to change us into ordinary clothes.”

Nan realized that the only witchcraft she had ever done was to fly that broom. She had not the least idea how you changed clothes. But Estelle was relying on her and it really was urgent. Feeling an awful fool, Nan held out both shaking hands and said the first thing remotely like a spell that came into her head.

“Eeny, meeny, miney, mo,

Out of uniform we go!”

There was a swirling feeling around her. Estelle was suddenly in a small snowstorm that seemed to be made of little bits of rag. Navy blue rag, then dark rag. The rags settled like burned paper, clinging to Estelle and hanging, and clinging to Nan too. And there they both were in seconds, dressed as witches, in long trailing black dresses, pointed black hats and all.

Estelle clapped both hands to her mouth to stop a giggle. Nan snorted with laughter. “This won’t do! Try again,” giggled Estelle.

“What do you want to wear?” Nan asked.

Estelle’s eyes shone. “Riding clothes,” she whispered ardently. “With a red jumper, please.”