The Rookery Boxset

by B G Denvil

  The messages must have been short since paper was so expensive, but wedding rings were rare too, so clearly this family had cared a lot. I smiled, said I was pleased, and turned to go.

  But that was when Rollo grabbed my arm and pulled me back. “How did you know? I beg you, Rosie, tell me how you knew?”

  Six

  So I told my story. I expected Rollo to call me a liar, but at least the appearance of those special souvenirs and especially the private notes had proved I wasn’t a complete idiot.

  I told him the whole story, and how his mother had looked, and what she’d said, and then coming the last time and every word I remembered her saying.

  He had always believed in ghosts, he told me. “I saw my grand-papa once,” he mumbled. “I thought he was still alive, but then I found out he’d died almost the same moment I saw him. But why doesn’t my mum come to me? I’d love to see her. I’d just absolutely love it.”

  It was a bit difficult to explain that the emotion made it harder for the dead to get through to their close relatives, but I tried to tell him. When you didn’t really understand yourself, it was far more difficult to make it understandable to anyone else.

  I haven’t seen him again since, not yet at least. I was nine then, and I’m fourteen now. I’m fairly sure I’d have forgotten him in a couple more years, and I’m totally sure he’s forgotten me anyway. He might always remember the events and the things from his mother are still kept safe somewhere no doubt, but he won’t remember the tiny brat who told him the story.

  Not that it matters. I’ve had my magical grade now. Not as bad as it could have been – I’m a fifty, like my mother. Understandable, I suppose. I’d expected no more. But meeting with all those great wizards who gave me the grade was exciting. Whistle was there too, and I loved it all. And a fifty wasn’t too bad since my mother always used to tell me I’d be lucky to find I was anything more than a ten.

  That morning, rather late home after the whole episode with Rollo and his father, unfortunately my mother had missed me and knew I’d gone out on my own. She had a long leather belt which kept one of her big wooden chests closed, and she rammed me up against a wall in the kitchens and whipped me with the belt. Oh, my goodness me, that hurt. I was yelling, when Whistle marched in. My mother stopped at once.

  “You will never do that again, Alice,” Whistle said, staring at us both. “Do you understand?” he went on. “Can you guess what I would do to you if this is ever repeated?”

  I was so surprised when my mother stood silent, nodding and dropping the belt. I whimpered a thank you to him and ran upstairs to my room. There was blood on my back, but not too much, so I rolled myself up and stayed in bed. And she never did whip me again, surprisingly. She slapped and thumped me, a big knuckled punch in the belly or on the jaw, and bed with no supper lots of times. But no more whipping with that belt. No wonder she started hating Whistle, while I loved him with good reason.

  Even at a lowly fifty, I admit I loved being a witch. I couldn’t fly and watched our residents fly in and out of their windows with envy and joy, I adored talking to the birds and bats, and always used to try and stroke that gorgeous little white fluffy kitten which kept appearing and then floating away into a transparent mist.

  I kept out of my mother’s way, did as she told me even though I usually got punished for doing that too, and sometimes looked for Rollo when I went to market. As I got a little older, I did the shopping on my own, and that was a lot more fun. I made a few sort of vague friends, and I liked the man with the big rake who tried to clean out the Piddleton gutters.

  Naturally I never saw Agnes again, though I would have liked to, but a few other ghosts used to mutter, rumble or sweep through, including a few ghostly birds and a dead owl I personally called Daisy. But Peg was my best friend even though she was half my size and twenty times older. But so sweet.

  Thumping up the stairs again one day, I saw Peg flying up past me, and I called to her, “I wish I could fly too. Is there any magic to make low grades fly after all?”

  She came to a halt two steps up and grinned down at me. “My dear little Rosie, yes and no. No, because there isn’t a way you can somehow make people fly if they can’t already. But yes, because all you have to do is hold my hand. Hold any flyer’s hand. They can give their own power to their own fingers. Perhaps it’s not quite as lovely as doing it yourself, but it can’t be bad. Come here, and I’ll show you.”

  Oh, why hadn’t she shown me before? I galloped into her arms and grabbed one of her tiny hands. “Now,” I begged. “Oh please.”

  And she did. Oh, magic! Well, of course it was magic, but it felt even more enchanted than anything else so far.

  She flew me off into the garden, and we whizzed around the trees and a couple of the crows flew beside us. There was the wind in my hair, the chill in my eyes, and the glorious feeling of no weight. I felt like a ghost myself, with my skirt flapping around my ankles and sticking to my legs, and seeing the whole world from up to down. It all looked so different laid out below me.

  We went flying quite a few times after that. Once she came and collected me from the market when I had two really heavy shopping bags to carry. That helped so much. I think the best of all was an evening the following spring, when a vivid sunset blazed a hundred amazing colours into the sky. Peg actually came to collect me.

  “Rosie, where are you? Oh, there you are. Come along, my dear, ‘tis time for a flight through the sunset.”

  I didn’t need any convincing. The idea sounded so thrilling. I held her hand, and we swept up like two little candles, waiting to be lit. And there it was. We were lit at once, flying through pure golden splendour. Great sweeps of scarlet surrounded me, and then the gold and the scarlet blended into an orange flame. I was roasted. I was cuddled by colour. I felt adored by nature. It was one of the best feelings. And Peg said she’d take me again one day.

  In the meantime, a couple of times she has flown with me during the crow’s nesting season, and I’ve been able to sit in the trees and feed those wide open desperate little squeaking beaks, popping various things into their throats, much to their parents’ relief. Gosh, those tiny new hatched crows were hard work. I’d been flown up to visit my father too, not that he was usually at home in his funny little tree house. Sometimes he was. But he wasn’t keen on being visited by anything that wasn’t either bird or animal. He was quite fond of yellow spiders, but they rarely speak. I spoke a lot which is what probably puts him off.

  Although I counted few of them as close friends, most of our wiccan residents were nice. There was Uta and Harry and Lemony and show-off Mandrake who thought more about his clothes than his magic, but he could be funny too, then tall handsome Montague who was magnificent but never even noticed me, then there were about forty others. We had a big house. The grounds just went on forever and ever, and the only other people who lived in Kettle Lane were Micky Postlethwaite and his big fat wife and their dog Spot and two sons I didn’t like over on the farm opposite, and then one little cottage right up the end where Kettle Lane joined the Piddleton Green. They were a nice couple called John and Jessie, and they had teeny weeny little twin baby girls. I’d sort of like to go and play with them, but my mother would probably get that leather belt out again if I dared do anything like that. But I didn’t see why it would be so bad. I could act like an ordinary human. There were no sparks coming out of my head, and I didn’t look anything like Peg, who I must admit looked very witchy.

  So any of you reading this who are secretly witches or wizards, whatever your grade, don’t be ashamed or frightened of what you are. Be thrilled instead. It’s a wonderful thing to be, and there’s so much to enjoy if you can work it out. In England witches could be hanged, but that doesn’t happen very often. However, I’d heard that in other countries some people actually burn witches alive. Ghastly. And what stupid idiots to be so frightened of us, they think they have to do such things.

  Most of us are lovely people, and we
can help get rid of coughs and colds and even worse things sometimes. Now wouldn’t you like to fly up to the top of Westminster Palace and sit watching all the silly humans walking down below?

  So make the most of your magic. The greatest fun in the world. Oh – but do keep it secret. Those same silly humans get jealous and scared. Just keep your magic to yourself and enjoy who you are.

  Kettle Lane

  One

  Brimming with a smile as wide as a cucumber, Alice told her daughter, “Well, Rosie, it has happened at last. The Rookery finally has a vacancy.”

  Dropping the scrubbing brush in surprise, Rosie stared back at her mother. “How? No one ever dies. No one ever leaves. Has they built another room on the back or something?”

  Alice shook her bedraggled black curls, her smile still wide enough to show off her vacant gums. “No, no, stupid child. At long, long last, Whistle Hobb has left us.”

  “Wow!” Rosie gasped. “Did you upset him? Or has he discovered a long-lost daughter to go and stay with?”

  “Whistle Hobb has finally died,” Alice announced, her smile now a sudden frown. “Utterly dead. Not a flutter of breath remains. And in fact,” and here she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “there are signs he may have been murdered. Cursed perhaps. Or something even more dramatic.”

  “What’s more dramatic than murder?” Rosie ignored the scrubbing brush she had dropped and walked towards one of the many tiny rickety staircases. One foot to the first step, she turned. “Honestly, Mother, Whistle was probably the most powerful wizard in this house. Who had the capability of killing such a man?”

  “You just go and clean up,” Alice said, flopping onto the nearest stool. “His rooms are sure to be a horrible mess, and I can’t advertise the vacancy while his room’s still a dump.”

  Rosie sighed and continued up the creaking steps. She was half way up when her mother yelled, “By the way. The body’s still in there. You’ll have to think of somewhere to put it.”

  “In a cupboard perhaps? Or the sewerage heap?” Stopping mid creak, Rosie gulped. “I can hardly bundle him off to church for a respectable burial. They’ll guess. He’s not exactly respectable, is he!”

  “Perhaps a pyre in the back garden. Or one of those crossroads affairs.”

  Rosie didn’t answer, but plodded along the small corridor to the two rooms previously, and apparently still, occupied by one of her favourite inmates. She stifled her increasing nausea. Rosie had liked Whistle rather a lot, she’d also admired him, being such a powerful and humorous wizard. Helpful too. Her own magical powers were shamefully small, but Whistle had taught her a thing or five.

  The bedchamber contained a bed somewhere, but it took Rosie sometime to find it. The clutter of papers, scrolls, papyrus, rice paper and parchment, many of these documents floated and scrambled to arrive on the top of the piles, and generally called for attention. This made it a little difficult to actually collect them, let alone prioritise them. Some, Rosie decided, might be important or even give clues as to who, how and why the murder had taken place.

  “Me, I’m important.” One parchment scroll was flapping in her face. She felt rather rude, pushing it away, but discovering roughly twenty thousand different papers of different kinds, she dismissed the idea of reading them all.

  “But I am worth reading,” the unrolling scroll insisted, flicking its corner into Rosie’s face.

  “You’ve put me off,” she replied firmly. “You scratched me.”

  “Then read me instead,’ whined a small piece of rice paper containing a long inky list. “I’m only little. You could read me in just a moment or two.”

  “I can’t read all of you,” Rosie complained. “Too many.”

  “The others,” said a loud and deep voice, “are of no importance whatsoever. Just read me.”

  “They’re all pathetic,” squeaked a folded parchment. “But me, I’m a big favourite. Master Whistle loved me dearly.”

  “So, did any of you,” Rosie shouted over the clamour, “see what happened to Whistle? Or see who came into his rooms?”

  There was a rather inane flapping of disappointment. “No,” said one sadly. “Master Hobb lies in the other room. He didn’t come to bed last night.”

  “And no one visited,” said a large scroll. “At least, no one came into this room.”

  Rosie sniffed. “Not even the maid?”

  “’Tis usually you is the maid,” an illuminated manuscript pointed out, making a dramatic twist mid air. “And dear Master Hobb is lying in the other room. His study, he called it.”

  “So did you hear anything odd?” asked Rosie, stopping suddenly. “Honestly, you could at least tidy yourselves a bit.”

  “We don’t know who goes with what,” a few voices chimed together. “And we all have different subjects so how can we make one pile?”

  “Because,” said Rosie, horrified, “it will take me all day.”

  “Oh, bother,” muttered a small paperback from the future.

  Two

  Whistle Hobb’s study was an extension of the bedchamber, for he slept rarely and spent most of his two hundred and sixteen years investigating, reading and inventing. Somewhere under the thousands of papers next door, there had surely been a bed, presumably with blankets and pillows, a chamber pot, and a chest for clothes, money and other essentials. Beneath the endless papers, no bed had been visible, but it surely existed.

  The second room presented a sadly different drama. The body of a small man lay prone on the floorboards. Whistle wore a costume very untypical for the year 1484, which was the date of his death. The eighteenth of April, to be exact. But instead of the expected doublet and hose, he was wearing a pair of brightly striped pantaloons, a green satin shirt and a navy-blue duffle coat. His feet, however, were bare, and since he was lying flat on his face, the bizarre tattoo of a crow was visible on both soles of his feet. These crows had invariably whistled when Master Hobb walked around. But they whistled no longer and appeared deeply dejected.

  His hair, quite white but rather bushy, covered the back of his head, along with a huge area of dried blood. There was more. Blood splatters decorated the entire room, and even the old beamed ceiling was marked with visible red spots. One of the beams appeared virtually repainted, and lying separate on the floor, Whistle’s black velvet wizard’s cape kept flapping in panic.

  Since the only window was particularly minute with tiny green glass mullions, Rosie had lit a candle. The cape kept blowing it out. She wondered if Whistle would manage to come back as a ghost and haunt the place, giving clues as to his unexpected ending. Master Hobb wasn’t just some back-street necromancer. He was, had been, a mighty powerful sorcerer. To imagine anyone strong enough to slaughter him was a terrifying puzzle.

  With the small flash of one index finger, Rosie turned him over. His face had been smashed. This had been a tortuously brutal crime, and Rosie ran from the room.

  “I’ll clean up later,” she told her mother. “But I’ll need help.”

  “Don’t leave it too long. Perhaps get some of the crows in,” Alice suggested. She was reading Ye Olde Recipe for the Best Pottage and Pastry, but since Rosie knew quite well her mother usually cooked by magic and had probably never lifted a saucepan in her life, she was perfectly sure the old woman was simply pretending to be busy so she wouldn’t have to offer help herself.

  “But I am getting quite a headache and must go back to bed. Besides, I have to word the advertisement for the new resident to take up the vacancy. Obviously, I can’t just write ‘Comfy cosy place available for an aging witch or wizard’. We’d all be carried off to Newgate.”

  “And where are you going to hang this notice then?”

  Alice considered the matter. “One on the outside of the old Guildhall, and I’ll stick another on the yew tree.”

  “What happens if a normal human unenchanted soul turns up?”

  “I shall think about it,” said Alice. The book on her lap (one of William Ca
xton’s early printings) was upside down, but this was often her preferred habit. “In the meantime, ask silly little Lemony Limehouse to help with the cleaning, and perhaps old Boris Barnacle will help with the heavy lifting. He can use all ten fingers, you know.”

  “I can lift poor Whistle using just two,” Rosie said with a superior shrug. “But Boris might be useful with a wet cloth. Did you see that place? It’s a massacre.”

  “I suppose,” her mother said after a short pause, “we should make some attempt to find out who did it.” She copied Rosie’s shrug. “I shan’t miss the wretched old show-off, of course, but we can’t risk having a killer on the premises.”

  “I’d already decided on that,” Rosie said, small voiced. “But I need help with that too, and it won’t be Boris or Lemony I’ll ask.”

  “Percy Rotten? The Butterfield woman? Or nice little Harry Flash?”

  “None of them,’ answered Rosie. “You just get on with your advert offering a double room vacancy on The Rookery premises for old folk in need of care. Specialising in–?”

  “The Rookery,” Alice said with pride, “is not just for old folk who can’t be bothered looking after themselves. This is a House of Care specialising in wiccan folk. We are, in case you have forgotten, a high quality wiccary. And since none of these medieval nitwits know what that means, they cannot apply.”

  “Do what you like,” sniffed Rosie. “I’m off to find my wiccan accomplice. Not, not you, mother. You’re only a fifty.”

  “No need to bring that up.” Alice returned to her upside-down book, but muttered, “Which is all you are yourself, my girl.”

  “I’m not ashamed of it,” Rosie said. “But I’m hoping to team up with an eighty-five.” Scurrying out, she at least thanked her lucky stars, of which she only had a couple and they rarely came out, that her mother seemed in a good mood for once. Poor Whistle’s death evidently pleased some, but half the old house hardly knew him, for Whistle had kept himself to himself for many long years. He was far too busy making his own spells and inventions, and invented his own much nicer food as well.