In the silence I was left alone to face the witch. I had no salt, no iron, no staff, and my hands were still bound behind my back, but I took a deep breath and tried to control my fear. That was the first step when dealing with the dark.
But I needn’t have worried. Suddenly the witch smiled and her eyes ceased to glow. The coldness within me ebbed. The snakes stopped writhing and became a head of black hair. The contortions of the face relaxed into the features of an exceptionally pretty girl and I looked down at the pointy shoes that I knew so well. It was Alice, and she was smiling at me.
I didn’t return her smile. All I could do was stare at her, horrified.
‘Cheer up, Tom,’ Alice said. ‘Scared ‘em so much they ain’t going to follow us. You’re safe enough now. Ain’t nothing to worry about.’
‘What have you done, Alice?’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I sensed evil. You looked like a malevolent witch. You must have used dark magic to do that!’
‘Ain’t done nothing wrong, Tom,’ she said, reaching out to untie me. ‘The others were scared and it spread to you, that’s all. Just a trick of the light really . . .’
Appalled, I pulled away from her. ‘Moonlight shows the truth of things, you know that, Alice. It’s one of the things you told me when we first met. So is that what I’ve just seen? What you really are? Have I seen the truth?’
‘No, Tom. Don’t be silly. It’s just me, Alice. We’re friends, ain’t we? Don’t you know me better than that? Saved your life more than once. Saved you from the dark, I have. Ain’t fair, you accusing me like that. Not when I’ve just rescued you again. Where would you be now without me? I’ll tell you – on your way to war. You might never have come back.’
‘If the Spook had seen that . . .’ I shook my head. It would have been the end of Alice for sure. The end of her time living with us. My master might even have put her in a pit for the rest of her days. After all, that’s what he did with witches who used dark magic.
‘Come on, Tom. Let’s be away from here and back to Chipenden. The cold’s starting to get into my bones.’
With those words, she cut my bonds and we headed straight back towards the Spook’s house. I carried the sack with what was left of the provisions and we walked in silence. I still wasn’t happy at what I’d seen.
The next morning, as we tucked into our breakfast, I was still worrying about what Alice had done.
The Spook’s pet boggart made our meals; it was mostly invisible but occasionally took the form of a ginger cat. This morning it had cooked my favourite – bacon and eggs – but it was probably one of the worst it had ever put on the table. The bacon was burned to a crisp and the eggs were swimming in grease. Sometimes the boggart cooked badly when something had upset it; it seemed to know things without being told. I wondered if it was concerned about the same thing I was: Alice.
‘Last night when you walked into the clearing, you scared me, Alice. Scared me badly. I thought I was facing a malevolent witch – one of a type I’d never met before. That’s exactly what you looked like. You had a head of snakes rather than hair and your face was twisted with hatred.’
‘Stop nagging me, Tom. It ain’t fair. Just let me eat my breakfast in peace!’
‘Nagging? You need nagging! What did you do? Come on, tell me!’
‘Nothing. I did nothing! Leave me alone. Please, Tom. It hurts me when you go on at me like that.’
‘It hurts me to be lied to, Alice. You did something and I want to know exactly what.’ I paused, blazing with anger, and the words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them. ‘If you don’t tell me the truth, Alice – then I’ll never trust you again!’
‘All right, I’ll tell you the truth,’ Alice cried, the tears glistening in her eyes. ‘What else could I do, Tom? Where would you be now if I hadn’t come along and got you away? Ain’t my fault that I scared you. Aimed at them, it was, not you.’
‘What did you use, Alice? Was it dark magic? Something Bony Lizzie taught you?’
‘Nothing special. Similar to Glamour, that’s all. It’s called Dread. Terrifies people, it does, and makes ‘em run away in fear for their lives. Most witches know how to do it. It worked, Tom. What could be wrong with that? You’re free and nobody got hurt, did they?’
Glamour was something a witch used to make herself appear younger and more beautiful than she really was, creating an aura that enabled her to bind a man to her will. It was dark magic and had been used by the witch Wurmalde when she’d tried to unite the Pendle clans in the summer. She was dead now, but dead too were men who’d been in thrall to the power of Glamour and had only realized too the late the threat she represented. If Dread were another version of that same dark magic, it worried me that Alice had used such power. It worried me deeply.
‘If the Spook knew, he’d send you away, Alice,’ I warned her. ‘He’d never understand. For him nothing ever justifies using the power of the dark.’
‘Then don’t tell him, Tom. You don’t want me to be sent away, do you?’
‘Of course not. But I don’t like lying either.’
‘Then just say that I caused a distraction. That you got away in the confusion. Not far from the truth, is it?’
I nodded but I was still far from happy.
The Spook returned that evening, and despite feeling guilty at withholding the truth, I repeated what Alice had said.
‘Just made a lot of noise from a safe distance,’ Alice added. ‘They chased me but I soon lost ‘em in the dark.’
‘Didn’t they leave somebody guarding the lad?’ my master asked.
‘Tied Tom’s arms and legs so he couldn’t run away. I circled back and cut him free.’
‘And where did they go afterwards?’ he asked, scratching at his beard worriedly. ‘Are you sure you weren’t followed?’
‘They talked about going north,’ I told him. ‘They seemed fed up with press-gang work and wanted to desert.’
The Spook sighed. ‘That could well be true, lad. But we can’t afford to take a chance on those men coming looking for you again. Why did you go down into the village alone in the first place? Haven’t you the sense you were born with?’