‘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.