Which Witch? Read online

  And then, suddenly, something happened.

  First there came – from the very depths of the earth it seemed – a low and sinister rumbling. Then the ground began to shake and shiver and a dreadful crack appeared beneath the Great Rock of the Druids.

  ‘It’s an earthquake,’ yelled Mabel Wrack, and the witches threw themselves on the ground, gibbering with fear.

  Next came a thunder clap, louder than any they had ever heard, followed by a streak of forked lightning so brilliant that it turned night to day.

  ‘The thunder before the lightning!’ wailed Mother Bloodwort, and began to beat her white old head against the ground.

  After that came the fog. A great, yellow, choking, blinding fog which rolled across the heath, enveloping everything in its cold and smothering darkness.

  ‘It be t’end of the world,’ wailed Ethel Feedbag.

  ‘It’s the Creeping Death,’ shrieked Nora Shouter.

  Only Belladonna was still on her feet, trying to comfort the terrified familiars.

  Then, as suddenly as it had come, the Great Fog rolled away, there was a last clap of thunder – and the witches gasped.

  For there, standing astride the Great Rock of the Druids was a figure so splendid, so magnificent, that it quite took their breath away.

  Arriman had taken a lot of trouble with his clothes. He wore a flowing mantle embroidered with the constellations of the planets, his trousers were of gold lamé and he wore not just horns but antlers which Lester had fastened most cunningly behind his ears. With his devilish eyebrows, his soaring moustache and the sulphurous glow that surrounded him, he presented a vision from which one simply could not tear one’s eyes.

  ‘Greetings, ye foul-mouthed hags and lovers of darkness!’ boomed the Great Magician.

  ‘Greetings!’ croaked the witches, rising slowly to their feet.

  Arriman could not see Belladonna who was hidden behind a thorn tree, but he could see Mabel Wrack whose sea slug had fallen over one eye and Ethel Feedbag, a burnt jackdaw feather sticking to her chin. He could see Mother Bloodwort and he could see the Shouter twins, and when he’d seen them he turned and tried to scramble down the rock.

  ‘Steady, sir,’ said Mr Leadbetter, who was standing behind the rock with a sheaf of papers.

  ‘The Cankers have never been quitters, sir,’ said Lester, placing a huge hand on his master’s shoulder.

  Seeing his retreat cut off, Arriman reluctantly climbed up the rock again. The witches meanwhile were getting dreadfully excited. They had begun to realize that they were in the presence of the Great Wizard of the North, whom nobody had seen for years and years and years and whose power was the greatest in the land.

  ‘Know ye,’ Arriman went on bravely, ‘ t hat I am Arriman the Awful, Loather of Light and Blighter of the Beautiful.’

  ‘Know we. I mean, we know,’ croaked the witches.

  ‘Know ye also that, obedient to the prophecy of the gypsy Esmeralda, I have waited nine hundred and ninety days for the coming of the new wizard to Darkington Hall.’ He caught a whiff of manure from Ethel Feedbag’s Wellingtons and staggered backwards.

  ‘Bear up, sir,’ came Lester’s voice from the darkness behind him, and with a great effort, Arriman pulled himself together and went on.

  ‘Know ye also that the aforesaid wizard not having turned up, I, Arriman Frederick Canker, have decided to take a wife.’

  The excitement of the witches grew to a frenzy. They began to mutter and nudge each other and to cackle fiendishly because it was known that Arriman had sworn never to marry. Only Belladonna went on standing quietly in the shelter of the trees, her periwinkle eyes fixed wonderingly on the great magician.

  ‘Know ye,’ Arriman went on, bracing himself, ‘that for my bride I have decided to choose a witch of Todcaster and that whichever witch I choose shall reign—’ His voice broke. ‘I can’t do it,’ he murmured, passing a hand across his eyes. He had just caught sight of Mother Bloodwort’s fly-stained whiskers in a sudden spurt of firelight.

  ‘No use turning back now, sir,’ came Mr Ledbetter’s quiet voice. But both the secretary and the ogre, peering out behind the rock, were very much upset. They had had no idea that things had got so bad in Todcaster.

  So Arriman made a last desperate effort. ‘Know ye,’ he went on, ‘that to choose which witch shall be my bride I have arranged a Great Competition in the grounds of my estate at Darkington during the fearful week of Hallowe’en. And know ye that whichever witch does there the vilest, darkest and most powerful piece of magic shall be my wife!’

  Pandemonium now broke out. Arriman waited for the lurching, cackling and hiccuping to die down and then he said, ‘Mr Leadbetter, my secretary, w ill stay behind to give you your instructions for the contest. And remember,’ he said, throwing out his arms, ‘that what I am looking for is power, wickedness and evil. Darkness is All!’

  And with a sigh of relief, Arriman vanished.

  When the witches had calmed down again, Mr Lead-better stepped out from behind the rock and handed everyone an entry form for the contest. Mother Bloodwort, who couldn’t read, held hers upside down, and the Shouter twins immediately began arguing about how many days there were to Hallowe’en.

  ‘What about that lady over there?’ said Mr Lead-better. He had caught sight of the pale glimmer of Belladonna’s hair between the trees.

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to bother with her,’ said Nancy Shouter.

  ‘She’s not one of us,’ said her twin.

  ‘Still, she is a witch,’ said Mother Bloodwort, spitting out a couple of flies. She was the only one who sometimes had a kind word for Belladonna. So Mr Leadbetter walked over to the clump of trees where Belladonna was still trying to calm the familiars.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said when he had introduced himself. ‘How very unfortunate.’

  For he realized as soon as he saw her what was wrong. The little, short-eared bat hanging so tenderly in her hair, the chickens roosting on her feet, the scent of primroses with morning dew on them. ‘Have you . . . er . . . always been . . .?’

  ‘White?’ said Belladonna sadly. ‘ Yes. From birth.’

  ‘Nothing can be done, I suppose?’

  Belladonna shook her head. ‘I’ve tried everything.’

  ‘You won’t be going in for the contest, then?’

  Belladonna shook her head. ‘What would be the use? You heard him. ‘‘Darkness is All,’’ he said.’ Witches cannot cry any more than wizards can, but her eyes were wide with sorrow. ‘Tell me, is he really . . . as marvellous as he looks?’

  Mr Leadbetter thought. Pictures came into his mind. Arriman shrieking with rage when he lost his suspenders. Arriman filling the bath with electric eels and giggling. Arriman ordering twelve stinking emus for the zoo and leaving his secretary to unpack them . . . But there was nothing mean or small-spirited about Arriman and it was very sincerely that Mr Leadbetter said, ‘He is a gentleman. Most truly a gentleman.’

  ‘I thought he must be,’ said Belladonna, sighing.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you one of these anyway, in case you change your mind,’ he said. ‘And perhaps you’d be kind enough to see that – Miss Swamp, is it – gets hers too?’ He had turned away when he remembered something. ‘I’m going to vanish in a minute,’ he said. ‘At least I hope I am. I don’t have any magic powers myself so I hope the Great Man will remember. But

  when I do there’ll be some presents on the rock – one for each witch. Make sure you get yours.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, I will,’ said Belladonna. Then she added shyly, ‘ I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but when you walked away just now I thought how very good-looking it was. Your tail, I mean. Mostly the backs of gentlemen are so flat and dull.’

  Mr Leadbetter was very much moved. ‘Thank you, my dear; you’ve made me very happy. O f course the moonlight is flattering. By daylight it can look a little crude.’

  He pressed her hand gratefully. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her abo
ut his childhood and the shock of finding that he was not like other boys, but just then Arriman found he needed his secretary. There was a little puff of smoke and Mr Leadbetter vanished.

  Almost at once, the other witches began to shriek and yammer.

  ‘Look! Over there, on the rock!’

  ‘Something glittering!’

  The next second they were all scrambling at a pile of oval handmirrors, very beautiful ones, set in frames of precious stones. But when they looked into the mirrors’ shining surfaces they did not see their own ugly faces. They saw the face of the great Arriman with his flashing eyes and curving nose and magnificent moustache. What was more, the mirror showed the witches what Arriman was doing at any moment in time so that they could get to know him and his habits and know what awaited them at Darkington if they should win.

  ‘What a smasher!’ said Nora Shouter.

  ‘Well, you’re not going to win, I’m going to win!’

  ‘Cor, I wouldn’t mind being married to ’im,’ said Ethel Feedbag. ‘Give the sheep the staggers, I will, when I get up there – an’ the cows the bloat.’

  Mabel Wrack smiled pityingly. T he daughter of Mrs Wrack, who’d been a mermaid, was such an obvious winner that she had nothing at all to worry about. ‘Mabel Canker, Wizardess of the North’. It sounded good.

  ‘I never thought I’d be glad I buried poor Mr Bloodwort,’ said Mother Bloodwort. ‘But I am because now I can go in for the competition.’

  ‘You!’ shrieked the Shouter twins. ‘You’re far too old!’

  ‘I am now,’ said Mother Bloodwort, ‘though there’s a lot of men as likes an older woman. But I’ve got a turning-myself-young-again spell. It’s on the tip of my tongue, and when I remember it I won’t half make things hum!’

  Belladonna had crept shyly forward and picked up one of the two mirrors that still glittered on the rock. Arriman was taking off his antlers – she could just see Lester’s huge hand undoing the sellotape. The great man looked tired and discouraged. Oh, if only she could be there to stroke his forehead and comfort him!

  ‘What are you hanging round for?’ said Mabel Wrack. ‘Yo u won’t be going in for the competition.’

  ‘That’d be a joke. Blossoming roses in the snow! Golden singing birds! Yak !’ said Nora Shouter.

  Belladonna said nothing. In silence she helped the other witches pack up their picnics, lifted Doris into the trailer, soothed Ethel Feedbag’s pig. But when the

  bus was ready to leave she did not join the others. It was a long walk back to Todcaster in the darkness, but she welcomed the idea of it. More than anything, she wanted to be alone.

  She was sitting quietly on the rock where He had stood, gazing into the mirror when a high and irritable voice said, ‘Well, I think you’re just being wet. Wet and feeble.’

  Belladonna sat up, startled. Then she realized that the voice had spoken not ‘human’ but ‘bat’ and had come from her own hair.

  ‘Not to say spineless,’ the little bat went on. ‘Why don’t you at least have a try?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, ’ s a id Belladonna. ‘You know perfectly well that I can’t even make a toad come out of someone’s mouth and that’s the corniest piece of blackness that there is.’

  ‘People change,’ said the bat. ‘Take my Aunt Screwtooth. She was the most useless old bat you can imagine – couldn’t suck juice out of an over-ripe pear without her husband to hold her claw. Then they took a holiday in some place abroad. Transylvania or some such name. She fell in with a family of vampires and settled over there. You should see her now, sucking blood as if it were mother’s milk. Fairly sozzled with the stuff she is. And if my Aunt Screwtooth, why not you?’

  Belladonna was bending over the mirror again. Arriman was in his pyjamas now. Yellow silk, they were, edged with black braid.

  ‘Is that really true? About your Aunt Screwtooth?’

  The little bat blushed in the darkness. He had

  made the whole thing up because he loved Belladonna.

  But Belladonna did not see. She was thinking. If she went in for the contest she could at least see him again. He’d be one of the judges for sure. And once she was there, maybe she’d find some way to help and comfort him.

  She stood up. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll have a try. ’

  Four

  Mr Leadbetter was very fond of watching television. In spite of his little stump of a tail he was a very ordinary person, and when the magic and goings-on at Darkington were too much for him he liked to go quietly to his room and watch the box.

  One of Mr Leadbetter’s favourite programmes was the one that showed the Miss World competition. Mr Leadbetter knew, of course, that it was silly for girls to let themselves be prodded and measured like cows or turnips at an agricultural show, but all the same he very much liked all the contestants coming from different countries and staying together at a hotel and appearing first in their National Costumes and then in their Evening Dresses and then in their Swim Suits, and when the most beautiful one climbed on to the platform and had a crown put on her head, Mr Lead-better always felt a lump come to his throat.

  So when it was decided to hold a competition for the Blackest Witch of Todcaster, Mr Leadbetter decided to organize it rather in the way that the Miss World contest was organized. Not, of course, that he thought of making the witches parade in their swim suits. Even before he saw Mother Bloodwort and Mabel Wrack and Ethel Feedbag he had not thought of that. But it seemed to him a good idea that the witches should be brought together in a hotel first

  and get their clothes and their table manners sorted out before they got to Darkington. Above all, he wanted to make sure that they knew the rules and that no hanky panky went on between them. Any witch casting a spell on another witch was to be disqualified immediately.

  So he rented the Grand Spa Hotel on the outskirts of Todcaster. It was a very grand hotel with a cocktail lounge and a ballroom and a terrace with stripy deck-chairs, and the Manager, who was quite used to conferences of politicians and schoolteachers and clergymen, rather welcomed the idea of a conference of witches.

  But after his first day there, Mr Leadbetter began to feel that he had made a terrible mistake. Mother Bloodwort and the Shouter twins and Ethel Feedbag just did not behave like Miss Australia and Miss Belgium and Miss U.S.A. In fact, as Mr Leadbetter said to Lester, who had come to help him, if it wasn’t for Belladonna he’d have had a good mind to chuck the whole thing and let Arriman get on with choosing his own wife.

  Belladonna, who had arrived earlier carrying a straw basket with her toothbrush, her nightdress and the magic mirror, had been wonderful. It was Belladonna who had tactfully removed Ethel Feedbag’s wellies and hosed them down in the pantry when the Manager complained about manure on his carpet. It was Belladonna who had sellotaped up Mother Bloodwort’s tin with the Coronation on the lid and persuaded the old woman that at the best hotels one did not come down to dinner in a Cloud of Flies. And when Mabel Wrack got into the bath fully clothed

  because her legs were drying out, causing Doris (who liked to be alone) to squirt her all over with inky fluid, it was Belladonna who cleared up the mess and carried the irritated animal to her own bathroom and quietened her.

  Not that she got any thanks for it. ‘It makes my blood boil,’ said Lester, ‘the way those witches talk to you.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Belladonna. ‘It’s hard for them, me being . . . you know . . .’

  They were in the office, which the Manager had kindly lent to Mr Leadbetter, snatching a quick cup of tea. Lester, who’d been badly hit by the sight of the witches in daylight, was prowling round looking for a sword to swallow. Mr Leadbetter, like everyone who organizes things, was shuffling his papers and worrying.

  ‘Maybe you’re just fancying yourself white,’ Lester went on. He found the Manager’s umbrella, looked at it and put it down again. There wasn’t any real skill in swallowing umbrellas and if they came unfurled inside it could be messy
.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Belladonna. As usual she was looking into the magic mirror which she carried with her everywhere. Arriman was sitting hunched up in what seemed to be a broom cupboard.

  ‘Try!’ said Lester, who’d set his heart on Belladonna as mistress of Darkington Hall. ‘Look, see that typewriter on the desk? Bet if you really put your mind to it you could turn it into a nest of vipers or something. I mean, you’ve got to believe in yourself.’

  Belladonna sighed. She knew it was useless but she hated disappointing people so she got up and felt in

  the pocket of her skirt for a magic wand or something of the sort. There wasn’t anything, of course – only a handful of healing herbs, the identity disc of a carrier pigeon who was playing truant from his loft and a baby field mouse. So she put everything back and just closed her eyes, waved her arms over the typewriter and thought of the blackest things she could think of, such as uncooked liver and shoelaces and open graves. Then she stepped back.

  ‘Oh dear!’ said Mr Leadbetter.

  The typewriter had not turned into a nest of vipers. It had turned into a pot of pink begonias; charming, sweetly-scented flowers, each cradling a golden bee.

  ‘Pretty,’ said the ogre gloomily.

  ‘I told you,’ said Belladonna, very much embarrassed. She turned the typewriter back again and picked up the magic mirror. How dreadfully the Great Man would despise her if he knew!

  ‘Still sulking, is he?’ said Lester.

  ‘Oh, no, he could never sulk,’ said Belladonna. ‘But he hasn’t perhaps been very . . . cheerful lately. ’

  ‘You can say that again,’ said the ogre.

  And indeed, ever since he had seen his choice of future brides at the coven, Arriman had been in a terrible state. He woke screaming from dreadful nightmares, babbling of fly-stained whiskers chasing him down corridors. He was off his food, his moustache had begun to moult and he hounded the Wizard Watcher unmercifully, sending the poor beast out to the gate long before daybreak in a last, desperate hope that the new wizard might still come and he could cancel the competition.