Once more her face lit up into a really broad smile. She wore a black dress and had pointy shoes but that smile somehow made me forget all that. Still, what she said next set me worrying and quite spoiled the rest of the day.
‘Ain’t going to tell you now,’ she said. ‘Tell you this evening, I will, just as the sun goes down. Come to me when you hear Old Gregory’s bell.’
I heard the bell just before sunset, and with a heavy heart went down the hill towards the circle of willow trees where the lanes crossed. It didn’t seem right, her ringing the bell like that. Not unless she had work for the Spook, but somehow I doubted that.
Far above, the last rays of the sun were bathing the summits of the fells in a faint orange glow, but down below amongst the withy trees it was grey and full of shadows.
I shivered when I saw the girl because she was pulling the rope with just one hand yet making the clappers of the big bell dance wildly. Despite her slim arms and narrow waist, she had to be very strong. She stopped ringing as soon as I showed my face and rested her hands on her hips while the branches continued to dance and shake overhead. We just stared at each other for ages, until my eyes were drawn down towards a basket at her feet. There was something inside it covered with a black cloth. She lifted the basket and held it out to me.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘It’s for you, so that you can keep your promise.’
I accepted it but I wasn’t feeling very happy. Curious, I reached inside to lift the black cloth.
‘No, leave it be,’ Alice snapped, a sharp edge to her voice. ‘Don’t let the air get to them or they’ll spoil.’
‘What are they?’ I asked. It was growing darker by the minute and I was starting to feel nervous.
‘They’re just cakes.’
‘Thank you very much,’ I said.
‘They’re not for you,’ she said, a little smile playing at the corners of her mouth. ‘Those cakes are for Old Mother Malkin.’
My mouth became dry and a chill ran down my spine. Mother Malkin, the live witch the Spook kept in a pit in his garden.
‘I don’t think Mr Gregory would like it,’ I said. ‘He told me to keep away from her.’
‘He’s a very cruel man, Old Gregory,’ said Alice. ‘Poor Mother Malkin’s been in that damp, dark hole in the ground for almost thirteen years now. Is it right to treat an old woman so badly?’
I shrugged. I hadn’t been happy about it myself. It was hard to defend what he’d done, but he’d said there was a very good reason for it.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘you won’t get into trouble because Old Gregory need never know. It’s just comfort you’re bringing to her. Her favourite cakes made by family. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. Just something to keep up her strength against the cold. Gets right into her bones, it does.’
Once again I shrugged. All the best arguments seemed to belong to her.
‘So just give her a cake each night. Three cakes for three nights. Best do it at midnight because it’s then that she gets most peckish. Give her the first one tonight.’
Alice turned to go but stopped and turned to give me a smile. ‘We could become good friends, you and me,’ she said with a chuckle.
Then she disappeared into the deepening shadows.
Chapter Eight
Old Mother Malkin
Back at the Spook’s cottage, I began to worry, but the more I thought about it, the less clear I was in my own mind. I knew what the Spook would say. He’d throw the cakes away and give me a long lesson on witches and problems with girls wearing pointy shoes.
He wasn’t here so that didn’t enter into it. There were two things that made me go into the darkness of the eastern garden, where he kept the witches. The first was my promise to Alice.
‘Never make a promise that you’re not prepared to keep,’ my dad always told me. So I had little choice. He’d taught me right from wrong, and just because I was the Spook’s apprentice, it didn’t mean I’d to change all my ways.
Secondly, I didn’t hold with keeping an old woman as a prisoner in a hole in the ground. Doing that to a dead witch seemed reasonable, but not to a live one. I remember wondering what terrible crime she’d committed to deserve that.
What harm could it do just to give her three cakes? A bit of comfort from her family against the cold and damp, that’s all it was. The Spook had told me to trust my instincts, and after weighing things in the balance I felt that I was doing the right thing.
The only problem was that I had to take the cakes myself, at midnight. It gets pretty dark by then, especially if there’s no moon visible.
I approached the eastern garden carrying the basket. It was dark, but not quite as dark as I’d expected. For one thing, my eyes have always been pretty sharp at night. My mam’s always good in the dark and I think I get it from her side. And for another, it was a cloudless night and the moonlight helped me to pick out my way.
As I entered the trees, it suddenly grew colder and I shivered. By the time I reached the first grave, the one with the stone border and the thirteen bars, I felt even colder. That was where the first witch was buried. She was feeble, with little strength, or so the Spook had said. No need to worry there, I told myself, trying hard to believe it.
Making up my mind to give Mother Malkin the cakes in daylight was one thing, but now, down in the garden close to midnight, I was no longer so sure. The Spook had told me to keep well away after dark. He’d warned me more than once so it had to be an important rule and now I was breaking it. There were all sorts of faint sounds. The rustlings and twitchings were probably nothing, just small creatures I’d disturbed moving out of my path, but they reminded me that I’d no right to be here. The Spook had told me that the other two witches were about twenty paces further on, so I counted my steps out carefully. That brought me to a second grave which was just like the first one. I got closer, just to be sure. There were the bars and you could see the earth just beneath them, hard-packed soil without even a single blade of grass. This witch was dead but was still dangerous. She was the one who had been buried head downwards. That meant that the soles of her feet were somewhere just below the soil.
As I stared at the grave I thought I saw something move. It was a sort of twitch; probably just my imagination, or maybe some small animal - a mouse or a shrew or something. I moved on quickly. What if it had been a toe?