Bed-Knob and Broomstick Read online

  "Yes," said the doctor. "As I turned the corner, he was close behind you; then he made a dart for that field."

  They found Emelius behind the hedge, white and shaking. It was the car that had unnerved him. His panic, in the face of such a monster, had left no place for courtesy. It was some time before Miss Price could calm him. When the mail van passed them later, Emelius stood his ground, but the sweat broke on his brow, and he quivered like a horse about to shy. He did not speak again until they reached home.

  6. Magic in Moderation

  Breaking Emelius into twentieth-century life was not easy, but Miss Price had great patience. He learned to clean his own shoes and to pass the bread and butter at tea. He became more modern in his speech, and once was heard to say okay. They had no sooner got him used to cars when he saw a jeep, and all their good work was undone. Airplanes he marveled at, but they did not come close enough to frighten him. But daily, as he learned more of the state of the world, modern inventions and the march of "progress," he clung closer to Miss Price as the one unassailable force in the midst of nightmarish havoc.

  On warm evenings, after the children were in bed, he would be with Miss Price in the garden, stripping damsons with a rake (for bottling), and they would talk about magic. Carey could hear them through her window, their voices rising and falling in restrained but earnest argument as the damsons pattered into the basket and the sun sank low behind the trees. "I never scrape the scales from an adder," she once heard Miss Price say earnestly. "It takes force from any spell except those in which hemlock is combined with fennel. The only time I ever scrape the scales from an adder is in spells against Saint Vitus' dance; then, for some reason, it gives better results..." Sometimes, when Emelius had been speaking, Miss Price would exclaim rather scornfully, "Well, if you want to go back to the wax image and pin school—" and Carey always wondered what the wax image and pin school was, and why Emelius, having graduated, should want to go back there.

  One evening Carey overheard a most curious conversation. It began by Miss Price saying brightly, "Have you ever tried intrasubstantiary locomotion?"

  There was a mystified silence on the part of Emelius. Then he said, rather uncertainly, "No. At least, not often." (He had never confessed to Miss Price that, after a lifetime's study of magic, he had never yet got a spell to work.)

  "It's awfully jolly," she went on. "I had a positive craze for it once." The damsons pattered gently into the basket, and Carey wondered if Emelius was as curious as she was.

  Miss Price gave a little laugh. She sounded almost girlish. "Of course, as spells go, it's child's play. But sometimes the easiest things are the most effective, don't you think?"

  Emelius cleared his throat. "I'm not sure that I haven't got it a little muddled in my mind," he ventured guardedly. "I may be confusing it with—"

  Miss Price laughed quite gaily. "Oh, you couldn't confuse intrasubstantiary locomotion with anything else." She seemed amused.

  "No," admitted Emelius. "No. I suppose you couldn't."

  "Unless," said Miss Price, suddenly thoughtful, leaning forward on the rake and gazing earnestly into the middle distance, "you mean—"

  "Yes," put in Emelius hastily, "that's what I do mean."

  "What?" asked Miss Price wonderingly.

  "That's what I was confusing it with."

  "With what?"

  "With—" Emelius hesitated. "With what you were going to say."

  "But intrasubstantiary locomotion is quite different." Miss Price sounded surprised and rather puzzled.

  "Oh, yes," admitted Emelius hastily, "it's completely different, but all the same—"

  "You see, intrasubstantiary locomotion is making a pair of shoes walk without any feet in them."

  "Ah, yes," agreed Emelius with relief. "Shoes. That's it."

  "Or a suit of clothes get up and sit down."

  "Yes," said Emelius, but he sounded a little less sure of himself.

  "Of course," went on Miss Price enthusiastically, "the very best results are got from washing on a line." She laughed delightedly. "It's amazing what you can do with washing on a line."

  "Astounding," agreed Emelius. He gave a nervous little laugh.

  "Except sheets," Miss Price pointed out.

  "Oh, sheets are no good."

  "It has to be wearing apparel. Something you can make look as if a person was inside it."

  "Naturally," said Emelius rather coldly.

  At first Miss Price, anxious not to have him on her hands for too long, had taken great trouble to explain the circumstances that governed the length of Emelius's visit, but, latterly, as he began to settle down and find happiness in the discovery of friends, she, too, seemed sad at the thought of his departure. And contented as he was, he himself was a little worried about the Fire of London and what might have hap pened to his rooms in Cripplegate, and, also, he felt in duty bound (having read of his aunt's death in the churchyard) to attend to the business of inheriting her estate. "I can always come back and visit you," he would explain, "if you could come and fetch me."

  But Miss Price didn't approve of this idea. "One thing or another," she would say, "not this dashing about between centuries. A settled life is good for everyone. I think the wise thing to do would be to give up your London establishment and settle down in your aunt's house at Pepperinge Eye. And we could walk up there sometimes, and it would be nice to think of your living there. You would not seem so far away."

  Emelius thought this over. "It's a good piece of land," he said at last, but he spoke rather sadly.

  Carey, who was present, said warmly, as if to comfort him, "We'd go there often. We'd sit on the stones in the parlor, near where the fireplace was, and we'd feel awfully near you—"

  Emelius looked at her. "I'd like you to see the house," he said. "As it is in my day."

  Carey turned to Miss Price.

  "Couldn't we go just once?" she asked.

  Miss Price tightened her lips. "It's always 'just once,' Carey. You've had your 'just once,' and we've still to take Mr. Jones back."

  "If we promise not to stay a minute, just a second, when we take him back, couldn't we just go once and see him at his aunt's house?"

  Emelius glanced at Miss Price's face, then sadly down at the lawn.

  "It isn't," said Miss Price uncomfortably, "that I wouldn't be happy to go and see Mr. Jones, especially in that dear little house, but—"

  "But what?" asked Carey.

  "I'm responsible for you children. There seems to be no way of knowing what may happen on these outings—"

  "Well," said Carey reasonably, "it's hardly much of an outing—just to go and visit Mr. Jones—in his quiet little house at Pepperinge Eye—not two miles away."

  "I know, Carey," Miss Price pointed out. "But what about that quiet day we planned on the beach?"

  "Well, after all, that was a cannibal island. This is quite different. Mr. Jones's aunt's dear little house. At Pepperinge Eye—"

  "If you came just once," said Emelius. "Say, a week after I left, just to see it all. Then after that you could just come in spirit—"

  "In spirit?" said Miss Price dubiously.

  "I mean just take a walk up to where the house was and we'll think of each other," said Emelius.

  Miss Price sat silent. They could not read her expression. At last she said, rather surprisingly, "I don't like flying in the face of nature—"

  "Well," Carey pointed out, "isn't the broomstick—?"

  "No," said Miss Price, "that's different, that's accepted—witches have always flown on broomsticks." She paused. "No, I don't quite know how to put it, and I don't really like to mention it, but there's no getting away from the fact that, as far as we're concerned, Mr. Jones is long since dead and buried."

  Emelius stared glumly at the grass between his feet. He could not deny it.

  "I don't hold it against him," went on Miss Price. "We must all come to it sooner or later, but it doesn't seem wise or natural to foster these attach
ments with one who is no more."

  They sat silent; then, after a bit, Emelius sighed. "There is no record of my death in the churchyard," he pointed out.

  Miss Price pursed up her lips. "That proves nothing. We did not look in the annex behind the yew hedge."

  "Don't let's," said Carey suddenly.

  7. A Change of Mind

  But Miss Price stuck to the original plan. When Emelius's clothes arrived from the cleaners, they took him back. They dropped him in Goat Alley at night and did not stay a minute. Miss Price never liked long, drawn-out good-byes, and in her efforts to spare everybody's feelings she was almost too businesslike. She would not "step upstairs" to try his cherry cordial. She bundled the children back onto the bed with almost indecent haste, and left Emelius standing, somber and dark-robed, in the moonlit street. Embarrassed she seemed, and worried by the whole business, and she was sharp with the children when they got home, and next day flung herself into bottling as though she tried to drown the memory of that sad white face deep in sliced apricot and squashed tomato pulp. She did not join the children on their expeditions, and the bed-knob had been hidden away.

  The happy atmosphere of the little house seemed to have dispersed, and the children wandered into the fields and sat on gates, talking and kicking their heels. They chewed long stalks of grass and quarreled idly, while the end of the holidays loomed in sight and lowered over them.

  No one even mentioned Emelius until one day at tea when Miss Price, quite suddenly, brought the subject up herself.

  "I wonder," she said, gazing pensively at the brown teapot, "if we should have taken Mr. Jones right home."

  The atmosphere at once became electric. Carey laid down her teaspoon. All three pairs of eyes were fixed on Miss Price's face.

  "But we did," said Charles after a moment.

  "I mean," went on Miss Price, "leaving him in the street like that. It was rather rude."

  "Yes," said Carey. "His house might have been damaged in the fire, or anything. He might have had nowhere to sleep that night."

  Miss Price looked worried. "It was just that we agreed—didn't we?—not to stay."

  "Yes," said Carey. "You remember we asked you whether if we promised not to stay a minute, a second, when we took him back, you would let us go later and visit him properly."

  "I didn't promise anything," replied Miss Price hastily. She poured herself out another cup of tea. As she stirred it, she said uncertainly, "But I think he's all right, don't you? He could always go down to Pepperinge Eye."

  "Yes," said Carey, "I'm sure he'd manage."

  "And yet," went on Miss Price, "in some ways Mr. Jones is rather helpless. That fire, you know, they say there were riots afterward." Miss Price, without noticing what she was doing, put another spoonful of sugar in her tea.

  "If one could write to him..." she suggested.

  "Yes," said Carey, "but we can't."

  Charles cleared his throat. "Would you like Paul and me just to run down and take a look at him?"

  Carey opened her mouth. "Without me?" she said indignantly.

  "No, no," put in Miss Price. "It wouldn't be fair to leave Carey. Perhaps—" She hesitated. "Perhaps we ought all to go."

  The children were silent. They dared not urge her. Carey crossed her thumbs and stared fixedly at the tablecloth.

  "We could just go to his lodgings and peep in at the window. Just to see if he's all right, don't you know. We wouldn't disturb him. I think," said Miss Price, "it would be kind."

  The children did not speak.

  "Once we knew he was all right," went on Miss Price, "we could come back and settle down happily to our lives."

  "Yes," said Carey guardedly.

  "Don't you think?" asked Miss Price.

  "Oh, yes," said Charles.

  "Although this is a flying visit," said Miss Price, "I think we should be prepared for any emergency." She took down her father's sword from its hook on the wall and tested the blade with her finger. Then she strapped the scabbard to the bed rail. Carey and Charles were folding blankets, and Paul was opening out the groundsheet. It was nine o'clock in the morning, and they were all gathered together in Miss Price's bedroom to prepare for the journey.

  "You see," went on Miss Price, "although I'm now convinced it is our duty to go, it is a great responsibility for me, now, at the end of the holidays. I don't feel justified in taking risks. I'm not sure that we shouldn't be disguised—"

  "How do you mean?" asked Charles.

  "We look so very twentieth century," said Miss Price. "And it will be daylight this time."

  "I know!" exclaimed Carey. "Let's hire something from a costumer, like we did for the school play."

  "No, no," said Miss Price. "I couldn't go in fancy dress. I shouldn't feel myself at all—but I have that black cloak, and you children would be all right in long dressing gowns, pinned up at the neck."

  "Oh, Miss Price, that wouldn't look like anything. The costumer would have the exact dress. I have seven and sixpence."

  "It would cost more than seven and sixpence," said Miss Price. "And we're only going to stay ten minutes. Dressing gowns are good enough. You are always apt to overdo things, Carey, and become fantastic. Now help me turn the mattress."

  "I should think," said Carey, taking hold of the mattress, "we should look jolly fantastic walking about London in Charles II's reign wearing twentieth-century dressing gowns pinned up at the neck—"

  "Now, Carey, that's enough. I have not the remotest intention of walking about London, and you're very lucky to be going at all."

  8. So Near

  Emelius opened his eyes. Then he closed them again. The light hurt them. "It is a dream," he told himself, "a nightmare, the worst I have ever had." He felt cold, but too bruised and tired to mind that he felt cold. He just lay there, on the stone floor, trying not to wake up. But, after a while, his eyes seemed to open of their own accord, and he saw the small, barred window and the gray sky beyond. He sat up suddenly, and then cried out with pain as the movement hurt him. He smelled the wetness of his clothes, and his hands slipped on the floor. Slowly he began to remember: yesterday, the horsepond; today, the stake....

  He had been betrayed. During the Fire of London men had lost their heads. A papist plot, they said, had caused it, and Frenchmen had thrown fireballs to burn the city. Somebody had spoken of Emelius, who lived so mysteriously in his dim lodg ing off Goat Alley, and king's men had searched his dwelling. There they found evidence of witchcraft and of sorcery, and when, on his return, he had walked up the dark stairway, two men had met him at the head and another, appearing from nowhere, cut off his retreat at the foot. He had been thrown into prison and tried, so angry were the people, almost immediately. When it was proved that he was no Frenchman, nor implicated in any "papist" plot, they accused him of having helped to cause the fire by magic. It was strange, they said, how he had left the city just before and returned when danger was over, and that his house, in the midst of such destruction, was barely touched.

  Ah, the horsepond ... that was terror! One little boy he remembered, a little boy with bare feet, who had run along beside him, ahead of the crowd, as they half dragged, half carried him toward the pond; a little brown-faced boy who shouted and jeered, showing his white teeth, and who stooped every few moments to pick a stone out of the dust. Emelius would try to duck, to shy away from that stone when it came singing through the air. He felt the little boy's laughing delighted face as part of the pain when the stone cut his cheek or glanced off his head.

  And the tying of his hands and feet, the constable standing by, the clergyman's solemn face. And then the sickening plunge downward to the green water, the floating duckweed ... a little parchment boat, half soaked, caught on a twig ... and then the choking, greenish darkness ... a noise in his ears like a scale played quickly on a violin. If he sank and died there in the water, it showed he was a human man and innocent of magic, but if he lived, that was a sign that he lived by supernatural powers, an
d they would burn him at the stake.

  Then up he had come, choking, spluttering, coughing. The thick robe, tied at the ankles, had held the air. He saw the sunlight and heard the frightened quack of ducks. Then down, down again, into the water ... the singing in his ears, the blackness; a blackness that thickened and spread, calming his fear, blotting out his thoughts.

  And now it was morning. He had lain all night where they had thrown him on the cold floor. Cold ... yes, he was cold, right through to the kernel of his heart, but he would not be cold for long; soon his wet clothes would steam; he would feel the hot steam rise upward past his face, and then his clothes would smolder; he would feel the heat of their smoldering against his skin, and their dry smoke in his nostrils—then, suddenly, the clothes would flare up into a running flame....

  The stake ... it was years since they had burned anyone at the stake. Witches and sorcerers were hanged nowadays, not burned. It was barbarous, monstrous, to burn a man alive! But the people were obsessed today by fire, fire, fire....

  "Oh," cried Emelius, putting his hands on his closed eyelids. "The stake ... the stake ... save me from the stake!"

  He sat quiet, his face hidden in his hands, as though, if he were still enough, he might find that, after all, he had died there in the horsepond and it was all over. "Here I am," he thought bitterly, "condemned for witchcraft, and I never knew a spell that worked."

  If it had been Miss Price—that would have been fairer; she was a witch, a real one, but no one would dare burn her. No one would pull Miss Price out of her tidy little house and drag her down the High Street to the village green. If she paid her taxes, observed the English Sunday, and worked for the Red Cross, no one bothered what she did with the rest of her time. She could create a black cat as big as an elephant, and no one would molest her as long as she kept it off other people's property and did not ill-treat it.

  "Oh, Miss Price, if you knew—" groaned Emelius, his eyes hidden, "if you knew that I am to be burned at the stake!"