Spook’s Apprentice wc-1 Read online

  He gave me a small silver coin, warning me not to lose my change, then sent me off down the hill on the quickest route to the village.

  Soon I was walking through trees again, until at last I reached a stile that brought me onto a steep, narrow lane. A hundred or so paces further, I turned a corner and the grey slates of Chipenden’s rooftops came into view.

  The village was larger than I’d expected. There were at least a hundred cottages, then a pub, a schoolhouse and a big church with a bell tower. There was no sign of a market square, but the cobbled main street, which sloped quite steeply, was full of women with loaded baskets scurrying in and out of shops. Horses and carts were waiting on both sides of the street so it was clear that the local farmers’ wives came here to shop and, no doubt, also folk from hamlets nearby.

  I found the butcher’s shop without any trouble and joined a queue of boisterous women, all calling out to the butcher, a cheerful, big, red-faced man with a ginger beard. He seemed to know every single one of them by name and they kept laughing loudly at his jokes, which came thick and fast. I didn’t understand most of them but the women certainly did and they really seemed to be enjoying themselves.

  Nobody paid me much attention, but at last I reached the counter and it was my turn to be served.

  ‘I’ve called for Mr Gregory’s order,’ I told the butcher.

  As soon as I’d spoken, the shop became quiet and the laughter stopped. The butcher reached behind the counter and pulled out a large sack. I could hear people whispering behind me, but even straining my ears, I couldn’t quite catch what they were saying. When I glanced behind, they were looking everywhere but at me. Some were even staring down at the floor.

  I gave the butcher the silver coin, checked my change carefully, thanked him and carried the sack out of the shop, swinging it up onto my shoulder when I reached the street. The visit to the greengrocer’s took no time at all. The provisions there were already wrapped so I put the parcel in the sack, which was now starting to feel a bit heavy.

  Until then everything had gone well, but as I went into the baker’s, I saw the gang of lads.

  There were seven or eight of them sitting on a garden wall. Nothing odd about that, except for the fact that they weren’t speaking to each other – they were all busy staring at me with hungry faces, like a pack of wolves, watching every step I took as I approached the baker’s.

  When I came out of the shop they were still there and now, as I began to climb the hill, they started to follow me. Well, although it was too much of a coincidence to think that they’d just decided to go up the same hill, I wasn’t that worried. Six brothers had given me plenty of practice at fighting.

  I heard the sound of their boots getting closer and closer. They were catching up with me pretty quickly but maybe that was because I was walking slower and slower. You see, I didn’t want them to think I was scared, and in any case, the sack was heavy and the hill I was climbing was very steep.

  They caught up with me about a dozen paces before the stile, just at the point where the lane divided a small wood, the trees crowding in on either side to shut out the morning sun.

  ‘Open the sack and let’s see what we’ve got,’ said a voice behind me.

  It was a loud, deep voice accustomed to telling people what to do. There was a hard edge of danger that told me its owner liked to cause pain and was always looking out for his next victim.

  I turned to face him but gripped the sack even tighter, keeping it firmly on my shoulder. The one who’d spoken was the leader of the gang. There was no doubt about that. The rest of them had thin, pinched faces, as if they were in need of a good meal, but he looked as if he’d been eating for all of them. He was at least a head taller than me, with broad shoulders and a neck like a bull’s. His face was broad too, with red cheeks, but his eyes were very small and he didn’t seem to blink at all.

  I suppose if he hadn’t been there and hadn’t tried to bully me, I might have relented. After all, some of the boys looked half starved and there were a lot of apples and cakes in the sack. On the other hand, they weren’t mine to give away.

  ‘This doesn’t belong to me,’ I said. ‘It belongs to Mr Gregory.’

  ‘His last apprentice didn’t let that bother him,’ said the leader, moving his big face closer to mine. ‘He used to open the sack for us. If you’ve any sense you’ll do the same. If you won’t do it the easy way then it’ll have to be the hard way. But you won’t like that very much and it’ll all come down to the same thing in the end.’

  The gang began to move in closer and I could feel someone behind me tugging at the sack. Even then, I wouldn’t let go and I stared back into the piggy eyes of the leader, trying hard not to blink.

  At that moment something happened that took us all by surprise. There was a movement in the trees somewhere to my right and we all turned towards it.

  There was a dark shape in the shadows, and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw that it was a girl. She was moving slowly towards us, but her approach was so silent that you could have heard a pin drop and so smooth that she seemed to be floating rather than walking. Then she stopped just on the edge of the tree shadows, as if she didn’t want to step into the sunlight.

  ‘Why don’t you leave him be?’ she demanded. It seemed like a question but the tone in her voice told me it was a command.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ asked the leader of the gang, jutting his chin forwards and bunching his fists.

  ‘Ain’t me you need to worry about,’ she answered from the shadows. ‘Lizzie’s back, and if you don’t do what I say, it’s her you’ll answer to.’

  ‘Lizzie?’ asked the lad, taking a step backwards.

  ‘Bony Lizzie. She’s my aunt. Don’t tell me you ain’t heard of her…’

  Have you ever felt time slow so much that it almost appears to stop? Ever listened to a clock when the next tick seems to take for ever to follow the last tock? Well, it was just like that until, very suddenly, the girl hissed loudly through her clenched teeth. Then she spoke again.

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Be off with you! Be gone, be quick or be dead!’

  The effect on the gang was immediate. I glimpsed the expression on some of their faces and saw that they weren’t just afraid. They were terrified and close to panic. Their leader turned on his heels and immediately fled down the hill with the others close behind him.

  I didn’t know why they were so scared but I felt like running too. The girl was staring at me with wide eyes and I didn’t feel able to control my limbs properly. I felt like a mouse paralysed by the stare of a stoat about to pounce at any moment.

  I forced my left foot to move and slowly turned my body towards the trees to follow the direction my nose was pointing, but I was still gripping the Spook’s sack. Whoever she was, I still wasn’t going to give it up.

  ‘Ain’t you going to run as well?’ she asked me.

  I shook my head but my mouth was very dry and I couldn’t trust myself to try and speak. I knew the words would come out wrong.

  She was probably about my own age – if anything slightly younger. Her face was nice enough, for she had large brown eyes, high cheekbones and long black hair. She wore a black dress tied tightly at the waist with a piece of white string. But as I took all this in, I suddenly noticed something that troubled me.

  The girl was wearing pointy shoes, and immediately I remembered the Spook’s warning. But I stood my ground, determined not to run like the others.

  ‘Ain’t you going to thank me?’ she asked. ‘Be nice to get some thanks.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said lamely, just managing to get the word out first time.

  ‘Well, that’s a start,’ she said. ‘But to thank me properly, you need to give me something, don’t you? A cake and an apple will do for now. It ain’t much to ask. There’s plenty in the sack and Old Gregory won’t notice, and if he does, he won’t say anything.’

  I was shocked to hear her call the Spook ‘Old Gregory’.
I knew he wouldn’t like being called that and it told me two things. Firstly, the girl had little respect for him, and secondly, she wasn’t the least bit afraid of him. Back where I came from, most people shivered even at the thought that the Spook might be in the neighbourhood.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I said, ‘but I can’t do that. They’re not mine to give.’

  She glared at me hard then and didn’t speak for a long time. I thought at one point that she was going to hiss at me through her teeth. I stared back at her, trying not to blink, until at last a faint smile lit up her face and she spoke again.

  ‘Then I’ll have to settle for a promise.’

  ‘A promise?’ I asked, wondering what she meant.

  ‘A promise to help me just as I helped you. I don’t need any help right now, but perhaps one day I might.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I told her. ‘If you ever need any help in the future then just ask.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked, giving me a really broad smile.

  ‘Tom Ward.’

  ‘Well, my name’s Alice and I live yonder,’ she said, pointing back through the trees. ‘I’m Bony Lizzie’s favourite niece.’

  Bony Lizzie was a strange name but it would have been rude to mention it. Whoever she was, her name had been enough to scare the village lads.

  That was the end of our conversation. We both turned then to go our separate ways, but as we walked away, Alice called over her shoulder, ‘Take care now. You don’t want to end up like Old Gregory’s last apprentice.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ I asked.

  ‘Better ask Old Gregory!’ she shouted, as she disappeared back into the trees.

  When I got back, the Spook checked the contents of the sack carefully, ticking things off from a list.

  ‘Did you have any trouble down in the village?’ he asked, when he’d finally finished.

  ‘Some lads followed me up the hill and asked me to open the sack but I told them no,’ I said.

  ‘That was very brave of you,’ said the Spook. ‘Next time it won’t do any harm to let them have a few apples and cakes. Life’s hard enough as it is, but some of them come from very poor families. I always order extra in case they ask for some.’

  I felt annoyed then. If only he’d told me that in advance! ‘I didn’t like to do it without asking you first,’ I said.

  The Spook raised his eyebrows. ‘Did you want to give them a few apples and cakes?’

  ‘I don’t like being bullied,’ I said, ‘but some of them did look really hungry.’

  ‘Then next time trust your instincts and use your initiative,’ said the Spook. ‘Trust the voice inside you. It’s rarely wrong. A spook depends a lot on that because it can sometimes mean the difference between life and death. So that’s another thing we need to find out about you. Whether or not your instincts can be relied on.’

  He paused, staring at me hard, his green eyes searching my face. ‘Any trouble with girls?’ he asked suddenly.

  It was because I was still annoyed that I didn’t give a straight answer to his question.

  ‘No trouble at all,’ I answered.

  It wasn’t a lie because Alice had helped me, which was the opposite of trouble. Still, I knew he really meant had I met any girls and I knew I should have told him about her. Especially with her wearing pointy shoes.

  I made lots of mistakes as an apprentice and that was my second serious one – not telling the Spook the whole truth.

  The first, even more serious one was making the promise to Alice.

  Chapter Seven

  Someone Has To Do It

  After that my life settled into a busy routine. The Spook taught me fast and made me write until my wrist ached and my eyes stung.

  One afternoon he took me to the far end of the village, beyond the last stone cottage to a small circle of willow trees, which are called ‘withy trees’ in the County. It was a gloomy spot and there, hanging from a branch, was a rope. I looked up and saw a big brass bell.

  ‘When somebody needs help,’ said the Spook, ‘they don’t come up to the house. Nobody comes unless they’re invited. I’m strict about that. They come down here and ring that bell. Then we go to them.’

  The trouble was that even after weeks had gone by, nobody came to ring the bell, and I only ever got to go further than the western garden when it was time to fetch the weekly provisions from the village. I was lonely too, missing my family, so it was a good job the Spook kept me busy – that meant I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I always went to bed tired and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  The lessons were the most interesting part of each day but I didn’t learn much about ghasts, ghosts and witches. The Spook had told me that the main topic in an apprentice’s first year was boggarts, together with such subjects as botany, which meant learning all about plants, some of which were really useful as medicines or could be eaten if you had no other food. But my lessons weren’t just writing. Some of the work was just as hard and physical as anything I’d done back home on our farm.

  It started on a warm, sunny morning, when the Spook told me to put away my notebook and led the way towards his southern garden. He gave me two things to carry: a spade and a long measuring rod.

  ‘Free boggarts travel down leys,’ he explained. ‘But sometimes something goes wrong. It can be the result of a storm or maybe even an earthquake. In the County there hasn’t been a serious earthquake in living memory but that doesn’t matter, because leys are all interconnected and something happening to one, even a thousand miles away, can disturb all the others. Then boggarts get stuck in the same place for years and we call them "naturally bound". Often they can’t move more than a few dozen paces in any direction and they cause little trouble. Not unless you happen to get too close to one. Sometimes, though, they can be stuck in awkward places, close to a house or even inside one. Then you might need to move the boggart from there and artificially bind it elsewhere.’

  ‘What’s a ley?’ I asked.

  ‘Not everybody agrees, lad,’ he told me. ‘Some think they’re just ancient paths that crisscross the land, the paths our forefathers walked in ancient times when men were real men and darkness knew its place. Health was better, lives were longer and everyone was happy and content.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Ice moved down from the north and the earth grew cold for thousands of years,’ the Spook explained. ‘It was so difficult to survive that men forgot everything they’d learned. The old knowledge was unimportant. Keeping warm and eating was all that mattered. When the ice finally pulled back, the survivors were hunters dressed in animal skins. They’d forgotten how to grow crops and husband animals. Darkness was all-powerful.

  ‘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 s
ometimes 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.