Diana Wynne Jones - Witch Week

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EDITOR'S NOTE
Late one night in 1605, a soldier named Guy Fawkes was caught with some two tons of
gunpowder that he had smuggled into a cellar beneath the Houses of Parliament in London. Fawkes was
arrested, tried, and executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot- a failed conspiracy to blow up King
James I and most of his government the very next day, November 5. Centuries later, English people still
set off fireworks, light bonfires, and burn "Guys" in effigy to celebrate November 5 as Guy Fawkes Day.
Chapter One
The note said: SOMEONE IN THIS CLASS IS A WITCH. It was written in capital letters in ordinary
blue ballpoint, and it had appeared between two of the geography books Mr. Crossley was marking.
Anyone could have written it. Mr. Crossley rubbed his ginger moustache unhappily. He looked out over
the bowed heads of Class 6B and wondered what to do about it.
He decided not to take the note to the headmistress. It was possibly just a joke, and Miss
Cadwallader had no sense of humor to speak of. The person to take it to was the deputy head, Mr.
Wentworth. But the difficulty there was that Mr. Wentworth's son was a member of 6B-the small boy near
the back who looked younger than the rest was Brian Wentworth. No. Mr. Crossley decided to ask the
writer of the note to own up. He would explain just what a serious accusation it was and leave the rest to
the person's con-science.
Mr. Crossiey cleared his throat to speak. Some of 6B looked up hopefully but Mr. Crossiey had
changed his mind then. It was journal time, and journal time was only to be interrupted for a serious
emergency. Larwood House was very strict about that rule. Larwood House was very strict about a lot of
things, because it was a boarding school run by the government for witch-orphans and children with other
problems. The journals were to help the children with their problems. They were supposed to be strictly
private. Every day, for half an hour, every pupil had to confide his or her private thoughts to their journals,
and nothing else was done until everyone had. Mr. Crossley admired the idea heartily.
But the real reason that Mr. Crossley changed his mind was the awful thought that the note might be
true. Someone in 6B could easily be a witch. Only Miss Cadwallader knew who exactly in 6B was a
witch-orphan, but Mr. Crossley suspected that a lot of them were. Other classes had given Mr. Crossley
feelings of pride and pleasure in being a schoolmaster; 6B never did. Only two of them gave him any pride
at all: Theresa Mullett and Simon Silverson. They were both model pupils. The rest of the girls tailed
dismally off until you came to empty chatterers like Estelle Green, or that dumpy girl, Nan Pilgrim, who was
definitely the odd one out. The boys were divided into groups. Some had the sense to follow Simon
Silverson's example, but quite as many clustered round that bad boy Dan Smith, and others again admired
that tall Indian boy Nirupam Singh. Or they were loners like Brian Wentworth and that unpleasant boy
Charles Morgan.
Here Mr. Crossley looked at Charles Morgan and Charles Morgan looked back, with one of the
blank, nasty looks he was famous for. Charles wore glasses, which enlarged the nasty look and trained it on
Mr. Crossley like a double laser beam. Mr. Crossley looked away hastily and went back to worrying about
the note. Everyone in 6B gave up hoping for anything interesting to happen and went back to their journals.
28 October 1981, Theresa Mullett wrote in round, angelic writing. Mr. Crossley has found a note
in our geography books. I thought it might be from Miss Hodge at first, because we all know Teddy
is dying for love of her, but he looks so worried that I think it must be from some silly girl like Estelle
Green. Nan Pilgrim couldn't get over the vaulting horse again today. She jumped and stuck halfway.
It made us all laugh.
Simon Silverson wrote: 28. 10. 81. I would like to know who put that note in the geography
books. It fell out when I was collecting them and I put it back in. If it was found lying about we
could all be blamed. This is strictly off the record of course.
I do not know, Nirupam Singh wrote musingly, how anyone manages to write much in their
journal, since everyone knows Miss Cadwallader reads them all during the holidays. I do not write
my secret thoughts. I will now describe the Indian rope trick which I saw in India before my father
came to live in England . . .
Two desks away from Nirupam, Dan Smith chewed his pen a great deal and finally wrote, Well I
mean it's not much good if you've got to write your secret fealings, what I mean is it takes all the joy
out of it and you don't know what to write. It means they aren't secret if you see what I mean.
I do not think, Estelle Green wrote, that I have any secret feelings today, but I would like to
know what is in the note from Miss Hodge that Teddy has just found. I thought she scorned him
utterly.
At the back of the room, Brian Wentworth wrote, sighing, Timetables just ran away with me, that is
my problem. During geography I planned a bus journey from London to Baghdad via Paris. Next
lesson I shall plan the same journey via Berlin.
Nan Pilgrim meanwhile was scrawling, This is a message to the person who reads our journals.
Are you Miss Cadwallader, or does Miss Cadwallader make Mr. Wentworth do it? She stared at what
she had written, rather taken aback at her own daring. This kind of thing happened to her sometimes. Still,
she thought, there were hundreds of journals and hundreds of daily entries. The chances of Miss
Cadwallader reading this one had to be very small-particularly if she went on and made it really boring. /
shall now be boring, she wrote. Teddy Crossley's real name is Harold, but he got called Teddy out of
the hymn that goes "Gladly my cross I’d bear." But of course everyone sings "Crossley my glad-eyed
bear." Mr. Crossley is glad-eyed. He thinks everyone should be upright and honorable and
interested in geography. I am sorry for him.
But the one who was best at making his journal boring was Charles Morgan. His entry read, / got up.
I felt hot at breakfast. I do not like porridge. Second lesson was woodwork but not for long. I think
we have games next.
Looking at this, you might think Charles was either very stupid or very muddled, or both. Anyone in
6B would have told you that it had been a chilly morning and there had been cornflakes for breakfast.
Second lesson had been PE, during which Nan Pilgrim had so much amused Theresa Mullett by failing to
jump the horse, and the lesson to come was music, not games. But Charles was not writing about the day's
work. He really was writing about his secret feelings, but he was doing it in his own private code so that no
one could know.
He started every entry with I got up. It meant, I hate this school. When he wrote / do not like
porridge, that was actually true, but porridge was his code-word for Simon Silverson. Simon was porridge
at breakfast, potatoes at lunch, and bread at tea. All the other people he hated had code-words too. Dan
Smith was cornflakes, cabbage, and butter. Theresa Mullett was milk.
But when Charles wrote I felt hot, he was not talking about school at all. He meant he was
remembering the witch being burned. It was a thing that would keep coming into his head whenever he was
not thinking of anything else, much as he tried to forget it. He had been so young that he had been in a
stroller. His big sister Bernadine had been pushing him while his mother carried the shopping, and they had
been crossing a road where there was a view down into the Market Square. There were crowds of people
down there, and a sort of flickering. Bernadine had stopped the stroller in the middle of the street in order to
stare. She and Charles had just time to glimpse the bonfire starting to burn, and they had seen that the witch
was a large fat man. Then their mother came rushing back and scolded Bernadine on across the road. "You
mustn't look at witches!" she said. "Only awful people do that!" So Charles had only seen the witch for an
instant. He never spoke about it, but he never forgot it. It always astonished him that Bernadine seemed to
forget about it completely. What Charles was really saying in his journal was that the witch came into his
head during breakfast, until Simon Silverson made him forget again by eating all that toast.
When he wrote woodwork second lesson, he meant that he had gone on to think about the second
witch-which was a thing he did not think about so often. Woodwork was anything Charles liked. They only
had woodwork once a week, and Charles had chosen that for his code on the very reasonable grounds that
he was not likely to enjoy anything at Larwood House any oftener than that. Charles had liked the second
witch. She had been quite young and rather pretty, in spite of her torn skirt and untidy hair. She had come
scrambling across the wall at the end of the garden and stumbled down the rockery to the lawn, carrying
her smart shoes in one hand. Charles had been nine years old then, and he was minding his little brother on
the lawn. Luckily for the witch, his parents were out.
Charles knew she was a witch. She was out of breath and obviously frightened. He could hear the
yells and police whistles in the house behind. Besides, who else but a witch would run away from the police
in the middle of the afternoon in a tight skirt? But he made quite sure. He said, "Why are you running away
in our garden?"
The witch rather desperately hopped on one foot. She had a large blister on the other foot, and both
her stockings were laddered. "I'm a witch," she panted. "Please help me, little boy!"
"Why can't you magic yourself safe?" Charles asked.
"Because I can't when I'm this frightened!" gasped the witch. "I tried, but it just went wrong! Please,
little boy- sneak me out through your house and don't say a word, and I'll give you luck for the rest of your
life. I promise."
Charles looked at her in that intent way of his which most people found blank and nasty. He saw she
was speaking the truth. He saw, too, that she understood the look as very few people seemed to. "Come in
through the kitchen," he said. And he led the witch, hobbling on her blister in her laddered stockings, through
the kitchen and down the hall to the front door.
"Thanks," she said. "You're a love." She smiled at him while she put her hair right in the hall mirror,
and after she had done something to her skirt that may have been witchcraft to make it seem untorn again,
she bent down and kissed Charles. "If I get away, I'll bring you luck," she said. Then she put her smart
shoes on again and went away down the front garden, trying hard not to limp. At the front gate, she waved
and smiled at Charles.
That was the end of the part Charles liked. That was why he wrote but not for long next. He never
saw the witch again, or heard what had happened to her. He ordered his little brother never to say a word
about her-and Graham obeyed, because he always did everything Charles said-and then he watched and
waited for any sign of the witch or any sign of luck. None came. It was next to impossible for Charles to
find out what might have happened to the witch, because there had been new laws since he glimpsed the
first witch burning. There were no more public burnings. The bonfires were lit inside the walls of jails
instead, and the radio would simply announce: "Two witches were burned this morning inside Holloway
Jail." Every time Charles heard this kind of announcement he thought it was his witch. It gave him a blunt,
hurtful feeling inside. He thought of the way she had kissed him, and he was fairly sure it made you wicked
too, to be kissed by a witch. He gave up expecting to be lucky. In fact, to judge from the amount of bad
luck he had had, he thought the witch must have been caught almost straight-away. For the blunt, hurtful
feeling he had when the radio announced a burning made him refuse to do anything his parents told him to
do. He just gave them his steady stare instead. And each time he stared, he knew they thought he was
being nasty. They did not understand it the way the witch did. And, since Graham imitated everything
Charles did, Charles's parents very soon decided Charles was a problem child and leading Graham astray.
They arranged for him to be sent to Larwood House, because it was quite near.
When Charles wrote games, he meant bad luck. Like everyone else in 6B, he had seen Mr. Crossley
had found a note. He did not know what was in the note, but when he looked up and caught Mr. Crossley's
eye, he knew it meant bad luck coming.
Mr. Crossley still could not decide what to do about the note. If what it said was true, that meant
inquisitors coming to the school. And that was a thoroughly frightening thought. Mr. Crossley sighed and put
the note in his pocket. "Right, everyone," he said. "Put away your journals and get into line for music."
As soon as 6B had shuffled away to the school hall, Mr. Crossley sped to the staff room, hoping to
find someone he could consult about the note.
He was lucky enough to find Miss Hodge there. As Theresa Mullett and Estelle Green had observed,
Mr. Crossley was in love with Miss Hodge. But of course he never let it show. Probably the one person in
the school who did not seem to know was Miss Hodge herself. Miss Hodge was a small neat person who
wore neat gray skirts and blouses and her hair was even neater and smoother than Theresa Mullett's. She
was busy making neat stacks of books on the staff room table, and she went on making them all the time
Mr. Crossley was telling her excitedly about the note. She spared the note one glance.
"No, I can't tell who wrote it either," she said.
"But what shall I do about it?" Mr. Crossley pleaded. "Even if it's true, it's such a spiteful thing to
write! And suppose it is true. Suppose one of them is-" He was in a pitiable state. He wanted so badly to
attract Miss Hodge's attention, but he knew that words like witch were not the kind of words one used in
front of a lady. "I don't like to say it in front of you."
"I was brought up to be sorry for witches," Miss Hodge remarked calmly.
"Oh, so was I! We all are," Mr. Crossley said hastily. "I just wondered how I should handle it-"
Miss Hodge lined up another stack of books. "I think it's just a silly joke," she said. "Ignore it. Aren't
you supposed to be teaching 4C?"
"Yes, yes. I suppose I am," Mr. Crossley agreed misera-bly. And he was forced to hurry away
without Miss Hodge's having looked at him once.
Miss Hodge thoughtfully squared off another stack of books, until she was sure Mr. Crossley had
gone. Then she smoothed her smooth hair and hurried away upstairs to find Mr. Wentworth.
Mr. Wentworth, as deputy head, had a study where he wrestled with the schedules and various other
problems Miss Cadwallader gave him. When Miss Hodge tapped on the door, he was wrestling with a
particularly fierce one. There were seventy people in the school orchestra. Fifty of these were also in the
school choir and twenty of those fifty were in the school play. Thirty boys in the orchestra were in various
football teams, and twenty of the girls played hockey for the school. At least a third played basketball as
well. The volleyball team were all in the school play. Problem: how do you arrange rehearsals and practices
without asking most people to be in three places at once? Mr. Wentworth rubbed the thin patch at the back
of his hair despairingly. "Come in," he said. He saw the bright, smiling, anxious face of Miss Hodge, but his
mind was not on her at all.
"So spiteful of someone, and so awful if it's true!" he heard Miss Hodge saying. And then, merrily,
"But I think I have a scheme to discover who wrote the note-it must be someone in 6B. Can we put our
heads together and work it out, Mr. Wentworth?" She put her own head on one side, invitingly.
Mr. Wentworth had no idea what she was talking about. He scratched the place where his hair was
going and stared at her. Whatever it was, it had all the marks of a scheme that ought to be squashed.
"People only write anonymous notes to make themselves feel important," he said experimentally. "You
mustn't take them seriously."
"But it's the perfect scheme!" Miss Hodge protested. "If I can explain-"
Not squashed yet, whatever it is, thought Mr. Went-worth. "No. Just tell me the exact words of this
note," he said.
Miss Hodge instantly became crushed and shocked. "But it's awful!" Her voice fell to a dramatic
whisper. "It says someone in 6B is a witch!"
Mr. Wentworth realized that his instinct had been right. "What did I tell you?" he said heartily. "That's
the sort of stuff you can only ignore, Miss Hodge."
"But someone in 6B has a very sick mind!" Miss Hodge whispered.
Mr. Wentworth considered 6B, including his own son Brian. "They all have," he said. "Either they'll
grow out of it, or we'll see them all riding round on broomsticks in the sixth grade." Miss Hodge started
back. She was genuinely shocked at this coarse language. But she hastily made herself laugh. She could
see it was a joke. "Take no notice," said Mr. Wentworth. "Ignore it, Miss Hodge." And he went back to his
problem with some relief.
Miss Hodge went back to her stacks of books, not as crushed as Mr. Wentworth supposed she was.
Mr. Went-worth had made a joke to her. He had never done that before. She must be getting somewhere.
For-and this was a fact not known to Theresa Mullett or Estelle Green-Miss Hodge intended to marry Mr.
Wentworth. He was a widower. When Miss Cadwallader retired, Miss Hodge was sure Mr. Wentworth
would be head of Larwood House. This suited Miss Hodge, who had her old father to consider. For this,
she was quite willing to put up with Mr. Wentworth's bald patch and his tense and harrowed look. The only
drawback was that putting up with Mr. Went-worth also meant putting up with Brian. A little frown
wrinkled Miss Hodge's smooth forehead at the thought of Brian Wentworth. Now there was a boy who
quite deserved the way the rest of 6B were always on to him. Never mind. He could be sent away to
another school.
Meanwhile, in music, Mr. Brubeck was asking Brian to sing on his own. 6B had trailed their way
through "Here We Sit like Birds in the Wilderness." They had made it sound like a lament. "I'd prefer a
wilderness to this place," Estelle Green whispered to her friend Karen Grigg. Then they sang "Cuckaburra
Sits in the Old Gum Tree." That sounded like a funeral dirge. "What's a Cuckaburra?" Karen whispered to
Estelle.
"Another kind of bird," Estelle whispered back. "Aus-tralian."
"No, no, no!" shouted Mr. Brubeck. "Brian is the only one of you who doesn't sound like a cockerel
with a sore throat!"
"Mr. Brubeck must have birds on the brain!" Estelle giggled. And Simon Silverson, who believed,
strongly and sincerely, that nobody was worthy of praise except himself, gave Brian a scathingly jeering
look. But Mr. Brubeck was far too addicted to music to take any notice of what the rest of 6B thought.
"The Cuckoo is a Pretty Bird,'" he announced. "I want Brian to sing this to you on his own."
Estelle giggled, because it was birds again. Theresa giggled too, because anyone who stood out for
any reason struck her as exceedingly funny. Brian stood up with the song book in his hands. He was never
embarrassed. But instead of singing, he read the words out in an incredulous voice.
'"The cuckoo is a pretty bird, she singeth as she flies. She bringeth us good tidings, she telleth us no
lies.' Sir, why are all these songs about birds?" he asked innocently. Charles thought that was a shrewd
move of Brian's, after the way Simon Silverson had looked at him.
But it did Brian no good. He was too unpopular. Most of the girls said, "Brian." in shocked voices.
Simon said it jeeringly.
"Quiet!" shouted Mr. Brubeck. "Brian, get on and sing!" He struck notes on the piano.
Brian stood with the book in his hands, obviously wonder-ing what to do. It was clear that he would
be in trouble with Mr. Brubeck if he did not sing, and that he would be hit afterward if he did. And while
Brian hesitated, the witch in 6B took a hand. One of the long windows of the hall flew open with a clap and
let in a stream of birds. Most of them were ordinary birds: sparrows, starlings, pigeons, blackbirds, and
thrushes, swooping round the hall in vast numbers and shedding feathers and droppings as they swooped.
But among the beating wings were two curious furry creatures with large pouches, which kept uttering
violent laughing sounds, and the red and yellow thing swooping among a cloud of sparrows and shouting
"Cuckoo!" was clearly a parrot.
Luckily, Mr. Brubeck thought it was simply the wind which had let the birds in. The rest of the lesson
had to be spent in chasing the birds out again. By that time, the laughing birds with pouches had vanished.
Evidently the witch had decided they were a mistake. But everyone in 6B had clearly seen them. Simon
said importantly, "If this happens again, we all ought to get together and-"
At this, Nirupam Singh turned round, towering among the beating wings. "Have you any proof that
this is not perfectly natural?" he said.
Simon had not, so he said no more.
By the end of the lesson, all the birds had been sent out of the window again, except the parrot. The
parrot escaped to a high curtain rail, where no one could reach it, and sat there shouting "Cuckoo!" Mr.
Brubeck sent 6B away and called the caretaker to get rid of it. Charles trudged away with the rest, thinking
that this must be the end of the games he had predicted in his journal. But he was quite wrong. It was only
the beginning.
And when the caretaker came grumbling along with his small white dog trailing at his heels, to get rid
of the parrot, the parrot had vanished.
Chapter Two
The next day was the day Miss Hodge tried to find out who had written the note. It was also the
worst day either Nan Pilgrim or Charles Morgan had ever spent at Larwood House. It did not begin too
badly for Charles, but Nan was late for breakfast.
She had broken her shoelace. She was told off by Mr. Towers for being late, and then by a monitor.
By this time, the only table with a place was one where all the others were boys. Nan slid into the place,
horribly embarrassed. They had eaten all the toast already, except one slice. Simon Silverson took that slice
as Nan arrived. "Bad luck, fatso." From further down the table, Nan saw Charles Morgan looking at her. It
was meant to be a look of sympathy, but, like all Charles's looks, it came out like a blank double-barreled
glare. Nan pretended not to see it and did her best to eat wet, pale scrambled egg on its own.
At lessons, she discovered that Theresa and her friends had started a new craze. That was a bad
sign. They were always more than usually pleased with themselves at the start of a craze-even though this
one had probably started so that they need not think of witches or birds. The craze was white knitting, white
and clean and fluffy, which you kept wrapped in a towel so that it would stay clean. The classroom filled
with mutters of, "Two purl, one plain, twist two . . ."
But the day really got into its evil stride in the middle of the morning, during PE. Larwood House had
that every day, like the journals. 6B joined with 6C and 6D, and the boys went running in the field, while the
girls went together to the gym. The climbing ropes were let down there.
Theresa and Estelle and the rest gave glad cries and went shinnying up the ropes with easy swinging
pulls. Nan tried to lurk out of sight against the wall bars. Her heart fell with a flop into her gym shoes. This
was worse even than the vaulting horse. Nan simply could not climb ropes. She had been born without the
proper muscles or something.
And, since it was that kind of day, Miss Phillips spotted Nan almost at once. "Nan, you haven't had a
turn yet. Theresa, Delia, Estelle, come on down and let Nan have her turn on the ropes." Theresa and the
rest came down readily. They knew they were about to see some fun.
Nan saw their faces and ground her teeth. This time, she vowed, she would do it. She would climb
right up to the ceiling and wipe that grin off Theresa's face. Nevertheless, the distance to the ropes seemed
several hundred shiny yards. Nan's legs, in the floppy divided skirts they wore for gym, had gone mauve
and wide, and her arms felt like weak pink puddings. When she reached the rope, the knot on the end of it
seemed to hang rather higher than her head. And she was supposed to stand on that knot somehow.
She gripped the rope in her fat, weak hands and jumped. All that happened was that the knot hit her
heavily in the chest and her feet dropped sharply to the floor again. A murmur of amusement began among
Theresa and her friends. Nan could hardly believe it. This was ridiculous- worse than usual! She could not
even get off the floor now. She took a new grip on the rope and jumped again. And again. And again. And
she leaped and leaped, bounding like a floppy kangaroo, and still the knot kept hitting her in the chest and
her feet kept hitting the floor. The murmurs of the rest grew into giggles and then to outright laughter. Until
at last, when Nan was almost ready to give up, her feet somehow found the knot, groped, gripped, and hung
on. And there she clung, upside down like a sloth, breathless and sweating, from arms which did not seem
to work anymore. This was terrible. And she still had to climb up the rope. She wondered whether to fall
off on her back and die.
Miss Phillips was beside her. "Come on, Nan. Stand up on the knot."
Somehow, feeling it was superhuman of her, Nan man-aged to lever herself upright. She stood there,
wobbling gently round in little circles, while Miss Phillips, her face level with Nan's trembling knees, kindly
and patiently explained for the hundredth time exactly how to climb a rope.
Nan clenched her teeth. She would do it. Everyone else did. It must be possible. She shut her eyes to
shut out the other girls' grinning faces and did as Miss Phillips told her. She took a strong and careful grip on
the rope above her head. Carefully, she put the rope between the top of one foot and the bottom of the
other. She kept her eyes shut. Firmly, she pulled with her arms. Crisply, she pulled her feet up behind.
Gripped again. Reached up again, with fearful concentration. Yes, this was it! She was doing it at last! The
secret must be to keep your eyes shut. She gripped and pulled. She could feel her body easily swinging
upward toward the ceiling, just as the others did it.
But, around her, the giggles grew to laughter, and the laughter grew into screams, then shouts, and
became a perfect storm of hilarity. Puzzled, Nan opened her eyes. All round her, at knee level, she saw
laughing red faces, tears running out of eyes, and people doubled over yelling with mirth. Even Miss Phillips
was biting her lip and snorting a little. And small wonder. Nan looked down to find her gym shoes still
resting on the knot at the bottom of the rope. After all that climbing, she was still standing on the knot.
Nan tried to laugh too. She was sure it had been very funny. But it was hard to be amused. Her only
consolation was that, after that, none of the other girls could climb the ropes either. They were too weak
with laughing.
The boys, meanwhile, were running round and round the field. They were stripped to little pale blue
running shorts and splashing through the dew in big spiked shoes. It was against the rules to run in anything
but spikes. They were divided into little groups of laboring legs. The quick group of legs in front, with
muscles, belonged to Simon Silverson and his friends, and to Brian Wentworth. Brian was a good runner in
spite of his short legs. Brian was prudently trying to keep to the rear of Simon, but every so often the sheer
joy of running overcame him and he went ahead. Then he would get bumped and jostled by Simon's friends,
for everyone knew it was Simon's right to be in front.
The group of legs behind these were paler and moved without enthusiasm. These belonged to Dan
Smith and his friends. All of them could have run at least as fast as Simon Silverson, but they were saving
themselves for better things. They loped along easily, chatting among themselves. Today, they kept bursting
into laughter.
Behind these again labored an assorted group of legs: mauve legs, fat legs, bright white legs, legs with
no muscles at all, and the great brown legs of Nirupam Singh, which seemed too heavy for the rest of
Nirupam's skinny body to lift. Everyone in the group was too breathless to talk. Their faces wore assorted
expressions of woe.
The last pair of legs, far in the rear, belonged to Charles Morgan. There was nothing particularly
wrong with Charles's legs, except that his feet were in ordinary school shoes and soaked through. He was
always behind. He chose to be. This was one of the few times in the day when he could be alone to think.
He had discovered that, as long as he was thinking of something else, he could keep up his slow trot for
hours. And think. The only interruptions he had to fear were when the other groups came pounding past
him and he was tangled up in their efforts for a few seconds. Or when Mr. Towers, encased in his nice
warm tracksuit, came loping up alongside and called ill-advised encouragements to Charles.
So Charles trotted slowly on, thinking. He gave himself over to hating Larwood House. He hated the
field under his feet, the shivering autumn trees that dripped on him, the white goalposts, and the neat line of
pine trees in front of the spiked wall that kept everyone in. Then, when he swung round the corner and had
a view of the school buildings, he hated them more. They were built of a purplish sort of brick. Charles
thought it was the color a person's face would go if he was choking. He thought of the long corridors inside,
painted caterpillar green, the thick radiators which were never warm, the brown classrooms, the frosty
white dormitories, and the smell of school food, and he was almost in an ecstasy of hate. Then he looked at
the groups of legs straggling round the field ahead, and he hated all the people in the school most horribly of
all. Upon that, he found he was remembering the witch being burned. It swept into his head unbidden, as
it always did. Only today, it seemed worse than usual. Charles found he was remembering things he had not
noticed at the time: the exact shape of the flames, just leaping from small to large, and the way the fat man
who was a witch had bent sideways away from them. He could see the man's exact face, the rather blobby
nose with a wart on it, the sweat on it, and the flames shining off the man's eyes and the sweat. Above all,
he could see the man's expression. It was astounded. The fat man had not believed he was going to die until
the moment Charles saw him. He must have thought his witchcraft could save him. Now he knew it could
not. And he was horrified. Charles was horrified too. He trotted along in a sort of trance of horror.
But here was the smart red tracksuit of Mr. Towers loping along beside him. "Charles, what are you
doing running in walking shoes?"
The fat witch vanished. Charles should have been glad, but he was not. His thinking had been
interrupted, and he was not private anymore.
"I said why aren't you wearing your spikes?" Mr. Towers said.
Charles slowed down a little while he wondered what to reply. Mr. Towers trotted springily beside
him, waiting for an answer. Because he was not thinking anymore, Charles found his legs aching and his
chest sore. That annoyed him. He was even more annoyed about his spikes. He knew Dan Smith had
hidden them. That was why that group were laughing. Charles could see their faces craning over their
shoulders as they ran, to see what he was telling Mr. Towers. That annoyed him even more. Charles did
not usually have this kind of trouble, the way Brian Wentworth did. His double-barreled nasty look had kept
him safe up to now, if lonely. But he foresaw he was going to have to think of something more than just
looking in future. He felt very bitter.
"I couldn't find my spikes, sir."
"How hard did you look?"
"Everywhere," Charles said bitterly. Why don't I say it was them? he wondered. And knew the
answer. Life would not be worth living for the rest of the term.
"In my experience," said Mr. Towers, running and talking as easily as if he were sitting still, "when a
lazy boy like you says everywhere, it means nowhere. Report to me in the locker room after school and find
those spikes. You stay there until you find them. Right?"
"Yes," said Charles. Bitterly, he watched Mr. Towers surge away from him and run up beside the
next group to pester Nirupam Singh.
He hunted for his spikes again during break. But it was hopeless. Dan had hidden them somewhere
really cunning. At least, after break, Dan Smith had something else to laugh about besides Charles. Nan
Pilgrim soon found out what. As Nan came into the classroom for lessons, she was greeted by Nirupam.
"Hello," said Nirupam. "Will you do your rope trick for me too?"
Nan gave him a glare that was mostly astonishment and pushed past him without replying. How did
he know about the ropes? she thought. The girls just never talked to the boys! How did he know?
But next moment, Simon Silverson came up to Nan, barely able to stop laughing. "My dear Dulcinea!"
he said. "What a charming name you have! Were you called after the Archwitch?" After that, he doubled
up with laughter, and so did most of the people nearby.
"Her name really is Dulcinea, you know," Nirupam said to Charles.
This was true. Nan's face felt to her like a balloon on fire. Nothing else, she was sure, could be so
large and so hot. Dulcinea Wilkes had been the most famous witch of all time. No one was supposed to
know Nan's name was Dulcinea. She could not think how it had leaked out. She tried to stalk loftily away to
her desk, but she was caught by person after person, all laughingly calling out, "Hey, Dulcinea!" She did not
manage to sit down until Mr. Wentworth was already in the room.
6B usually paid attention during Mr. Wentworth's lessons. He was known to be absolutely merciless.
Besides, he had a knack of being interesting, which made his lessons seem shorter than other teachers'.
But today, no one could keep their mind on Mr. Wentworth. Nan was trying not to cry. When, a year ago,
Nan's aunts had brought her to Larwood House, even softer, plumper, and more timid than she was now,
Miss Cadwallader had promised that no one should know her name was Dulcinea. Miss Cadwallader had
prom-ised! So how had someone found out? The rest of 6B kept breaking into laughter and excited
whispers. Could Nan Pilgrim be a witch? Fancy anyone being called Dulcinea! It was as bad as being
called Guy Fawkes! Halfway through the lesson, Theresa Mullett was so overcome by the thought of Nan's
name that she was forced to bury her face in her knitting to laugh.
Mr. Wentworth promptly took the knitting away. He dumped the clean white bundle on the desk in
front of him and inspected it dubiously. "What is it about this that seems so funny?" He unrolled the towel-at
which Theresa gave a faint yell of dismay-and held up a very small fluffy thing with holes in it. "Just what is
this?" Everyone laughed. "It's a bootee!" Theresa said angrily. "Who for?" retorted Mr. Wentworth.
Everyone laughed again. But the laughter was short and guilty, because everyone knew Theresa was not
to be laughed at.
Mr. Wentworth seemed unaware that he had performed a miracle and made everyone laugh at
Theresa, instead of the other way round. He cut the laughter even shorter by telling Dan Smith to come out
to the blackboard and show him two triangles that were alike. The lesson went on. Theresa kept muttering,
"It's not funny! It's just not funny!" Every time she said it, her friends nodded sympathetically, while the rest
of the class kept looking at Nan and bursting into muffled laughter.
At the end of the lesson, Mr. Wentworth uttered a few unpleasant remarks about mass punishments
if people behaved like this again. Then, as he turned to leave, he said, "And by the way, if Charles Morgan,
Nan Pilgrim, and Nirupam Singh haven't already looked at the main notice board, they should do so at once.
They will find they are down for lunch, on high table."
Both Nan and Charles knew then that this was not just a bad day-it was the worst day ever. Miss
Cadwallader sat at high table with any important visitors to the school. It was her custom to choose three
pupils from the school every day to sit there with her. This was so that everyone should learn proper table
manners, and so that Miss Cadwallader should get to know her pupils. It was rightly considered a terrible
ordeal. Neither Nan nor Charles had ever been chosen before. Scarcely able to believe it, they went to
check with the notice board. Sure enough it read: Charles Morgan 6B, Dulcinea Pilgrim 6B, Nirupam
Singh 6B.
Nan stared at it. So that was how everyone knew her name! Miss Cadwallader had forgotten. She
had forgotten who Nan was and everything she had promised, and when she came to stick a pin in the
register-or whatever she did to choose people for high table-she had simply written down the names that
came under her pin.
Nirupam was looking at the notice too. He had been chosen before, but he was no less gloomy than
Charles or Nan. "You have to comb your hair and get your blazer clean," he said. "And it really is true you
have to eat with the same kind of knife or fork that Miss Cadwallader does. You have to watch and see
what she uses all the time."
Nan stood there, letting other people looking at the notices push her about. She was terrified. She
suddenly knew she was going to behave very badly on high table. She was going to drop her dinner, or
scream, or maybe take all her clothes off and dance among the plates. And she was terrified, because she
knew she was not going to be able to stop herself.
She was still terrified when she arrived at high table with Charles and Nirupam. They had all combed
their heads sore and tried to clean from the fronts of their blazers the dirt which always mysteriously arrives
on the fronts of blazers, but they all felt grubby and small beside the stately company at high table. There
were a number of teachers, and the bursar, and an important-looking man called Lord Some-thing-or-other,
and tall, stringy Miss Cadwallader herself. Miss Cadwallader smiled at them graciously and pointed to three
empty chairs at her left side. All of them instantly dived for the chair furthest away from Miss Cadwallader.
Nan, much to her surprise, won it, and Charles won the chair in the middle, leaving Nirupam to sit beside
Miss Cadwallader.
"Now we know that won't do, don't we?" said Miss Cadwallader. "We always sit with a gentleman
on either side of a lady, don't we? Dulcimer must sit in the middle, and I'll have the gentleman I haven't yet
met nearest me. Clive Morgan, isn't it? That's right."
Suddenly, Charles, Nan, and Nirupam changed places. They stood there, while Miss Cadwallader
was saying grace, looking out over the heads of the rest of the school, not very far below, but far enough to
make a lot of difference. Perhaps I'm going to faint, Nan thought hopefully. She still knew she was going to
behave badly, but she felt very odd as well-and fainting was a fairly respectable way of behaving badly.
She was still conscious at the end of grace. She sat down with the rest, between the glowering
Charles and Nirupam. Nirupam had gone pale yellow with dread. To their relief, Miss Cadwallader at once
turned to the important lord and began making gracious conversation with him. The ladies from the kitchen
brought round a tray of little bowls and handed everybody one.
What was this? It was certainly not a usual part of school dinner. They looked suspiciously at the
bowls. They were full of yellow stuff, not quite covering little pink things.
"I believe it may be prawns," Nirupam said dubiously. "For a starter."
Here Miss Cadwallader reached forth a gracious hand. Their heads at once craned round to see
what implement she was going to eat out of the bowl with. Her hand picked up a fork. They picked up
forks too. Nan poked hers cautiously into her bowl. Instantly she began to behave badly. She could not stop
herself. "I think it's custard," she said loudly. "Do prawns mix with custard?" She put one of the pink things
into her mouth. It felt rubbery. "Chewing gum?" she asked. "No, I think they're jointed worms. Worms in
custard."
"Shut up!" hissed Nirupam.
"But it's not custard," Nan continued. She could hear her voice saying it, but there seemed no way to
stop it. "The tongue-test proves that the yellow stuff has a strong taste of sour armpits, combined
with-yes-just a touch of old drains. It comes from the bottom of a dustbin."
Charles glared at her. He felt sick. If he had dared, he would have stopped eating at once. But Miss
Cadwallader continued gracefully forking up prawns-unless they really were jointed worms-and Charles did
not dare do dif-ferently. He wondered how he was going to put this in his journal. He had never hated Nan
Pilgrim particularly before, so he had no code-word for her. Prawn? Could he call her prawn? He choked
down another worm-prawn, that was- and he wished he could push the whole bowlful in Nan's face.
"A clean yellow dustbin," Nan announced. "The kind they keep the dead fish for biology in." "Prawns
are eaten curried in India," Nirupam said loudly. Nan knew he was trying to shut her up. With a great
effort, by cramming several forkfuls of worms-prawns, that was-into her mouth at once, she managed to
stop herself from talking. She could hardly bring herself to swallow the mouthful, but at least it kept her
quiet. Most fervently, she hoped that the next course would be something ordinary, which she would not
have any urge to describe, and so did Nirupam and Charles.
But alas! What came before them in platefuls next was one of the school kitchen's more peculiar
dishes. They produced it about once a month and its official name was hot-pot. With it came tinned peas
and tinned tomatoes. Charles's head and Nirupam's craned toward Miss Cadwallader again to see what
they were supposed to eat this with. Miss Cadwallader picked up a fork. They picked up forks too, and then
craned a second time, to make sure that Miss Cadwallader was not going to pick up a knife as well and so
make it easier for everyone. She was not. Her fork dove gracefully under a pile of tinned peas. They
sighed, and found both their heads turning toward Nan then in a sort of horrified expectation.
They were not disappointed. As Nan levered loose the first greasy ring of potato, the urge to describe
came upon her again. It was as if she was possessed. "Now the aim of this dish," she said, "is to use up
leftovers. You take old potatoes and soak them in washing-up water that has been used at least twice. The
water must be thoroughly scummy." It's like the gift of tongues! she thought. Only in my case it's the gift of
foul-mouth. "Then you take a dirty old tin and rub it round with socks that have been worn for a fortnight.
You fill this tin with alternate layers of scummy potatoes and catfood, mixed with anything else you happen
to have. Old doughnuts and dead flies have been used in this case-"
Could his code-word for Nan be hot-pot? Charles won-dered. It suited her. No, because they only
had hot-pot once a month-fortunately-and, at this rate, he would need to hate Nan practically every day.
Why didn't someone stop her? Couldn't Miss Cadwallader hear?
"Now these things," Nan continued, stabbing her fork into a tinned tomato, "are small creatures that
have been killed and cleverly skinned. Notice, when you taste them, the slight, sweet savor of their blood-"
Nirupam uttered a small moan and went yellower than ever.
The sound made Nan look up. Hitherto, she had been staring at the table where her plate was, in a
daze of terror. Now she saw Mr. Wentworth sitting opposite her across the table. He could hear her
perfectly. She could tell from the expression on his face. Why doesn't he stop me? she thought. Why do
they let me go on? Why doesn't somebody do something, like a thunderbolt strike me, or eternal detention?
Why don't I get under the table and crawl away? And, all the time, she could hear herself talking. "These
did in fact start life as peas. But they have since undergone a long and deadly process. They lie for six
months in a sewer, absorbing fluids and rich tastes, which is why they are called processed peas. Then-"
Here, Miss Cadwallader turned gracefully to them. Nan, to her utter relief, stopped in mid-sentence.
"You have all been long enough in the school by now," Miss Cadwallader said, "to know the town quite
well. Do you know that lovely old house in High Street?"
They all three stared at her. Charles gulped down a ring of potato. "Lovely old house?"
"It's called the Old Gate House," said Miss Cadwallader. "It used to be part of the gate in the old
town wall. A very lovely old brick building."
"You mean the one with a tower on top and windows like a church?" Charles asked, though he could
not think why Miss Cadwallader should talk of this and not processed peas.
"That's the one," said Miss Cadwallader. "And it's such a shame. It's going to be pulled down to make
way for a supermarket. You know it has a king-pin roof, don't you?"
"Oh," said Charles. "Has it?"
"And a queen-pin," said Miss Cadwallader.
Charles seemed to have got saddled with the conversation. Nirupam was happy enough not to talk,
and Nan dared do no more than nod intelligently, in case she started describing the food again. As Miss
Cadwallader talked, and Charles was forced to answer while trying to eat tinned tomatoes-no, they were
not skinned mice!-using just a fork, Charles began to feel he was undergoing a particularly refined form of
torture. He realized he needed a hate-word for Miss Cadwallader too. Hot-pot would do for her. Surely
nothing as awful as this could happen to him more than once a month? But that meant he had still not got a
code-word for Nan.
They took the hot-pot away. Charles had not eaten much. Miss Cadwallader continued to talk to him
about houses in the town, then about stately homes in the country, until the pudding arrived. It was set
before Charles, white and bleak and swimming, with little white grains in it like the corpses of ants-Lord, he
was getting as bad as Nan Pilgrim! Then he realized it was the ideal word for Nan.
"Rice pudding!" he exclaimed.
"It is agreeable," Miss Cadwallader said, smiling. "And so nourishing." Then, incredibly, she reached
to the top of her plate and picked up a fork. Charles stared. He waited.
Surely Miss Cadwallader was not going to eat runny rice pudding with just a fork? But she was. She
dipped the fork in and brought it up, raining weak white milk.
Slowly, Charles picked up a fork too and turned to meet Nan's and Nirupam's incredulous faces. It
was just not possible.
Nirupam looked wretchedly down at his brimming plate. "There is a story in the Arabian Nights," he
said, "about a woman who ate rice with a pin, grain by grain." Charles shot a terrified look at Miss
Cadwallader, but she was talking to the lord again. "She turned out to be a ghoul," Nirupam said. "She ate
her fill of corpses every night."
Charles's terrified look shot to Nan instead. "Shut up, you fool! You'll set her off again!"
But the possession seemed to have left Nan by then. She was able to whisper, with her head bent
over her plate so that only the boys could hear, "Mr. Wentworth's using his spoon. Look."
"Do you think we dare?" said Nirupam.
"I'm going to," said Charles. "I'm hungry."
So they all used their spoons. When the meal was at last over, they were all dismayed to find Mr.
Wentworth beckoning. But it was only Nan he was beckoning. When she came reluctantly over, he said,
"See me at four in my study." Which was, Nan felt, all she needed. And the day was still only half over.
Chapter Three
That afternoon, Nan came into the classroom to find a broom laid across her desk. It was an old tatty
broom, with only the bare minimum of twigs left in the brush end, which the groundsman sometimes used to
sweep the paths. Someone had brought it in from the groundsman's shed. Someone had tied a label to the
handle: Dulcinea's Pony. Nan recognized the round, angelic writing as Theresa's.
Amid sniggers and titters, she looked round the assembled faces. Theresa would not have thought of
stealing a broom on her own. Estelle? No. Neither Estelle nor Karen Grigg was there. No, it was Dan
Smith, by the look on his face. Then she looked at Simon Silverson and was not so sure. It could not have
been both of them because they never, ever did anything together.
Simon said to her, in his suavest manner, grinning all over his face, "Why don't you hop on and have a
ride, Dulcinea?"
"Yes, go on. Ride it, Dulcinea," said Dan.
摘要：

EDITOR'SNOTELateonenightin1605,asoldiernamedGuyFawkeswascaughtwithsometwotonsofgunpowderthathehadsmuggledintoacellarbeneaththeHousesofParliamentinLondon.Fawkeswasarrested,tried,andexecutedforhispartintheGunpowderPlot-afailedconspiracytoblowupKingJamesIandmostofhisgovernmenttheverynextday,November5.C...

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