The Witch of Clatteringshaws

by Joan Aiken

  “Don’t beat me—don’t!” he pleaded. “My foot’s terrible bad—I canna walk—truly!”

  “No one’s a-going to beat ye, ye pore little critter!” said Dido. “Who are ye?”

  “I’m Fred.”

  That should be young Fred’s job, Dido recalled Mrs. McClan’s saying.

  “Are you Mrs. McClan’s son?”

  “Sakes, no! I’m nobody’s bairn.”

  “But she does have a son?”

  “Ay, Desmond. But he’s sick abed. Dinna tell him I’ve been talking to ye—dinna! Or he’d beat me to a paste—”

  “What’s up with your foot?”

  “A log fell on it.”

  “Maybe you’ve broken some bones. Let’s have a gander at it. Can ye hop out to the kitchen?”

  Fred was helped out into the kitchen, where Dido and Piers inspected him. He was covered in bruises and had a black eye. His ankle, though badly swollen, was not broken. Dido, who had acquired experience in first aid during nine months aboard a whaling ship, made a cold compress with rags from a box, snow from the kitchen garden, lemon balm, and comfrey, which she found hanging in a storeroom.

  Piers was fetching carrots and Dido was chopping onions for the inky-pinky when Mrs. McClan returned,

  “Deliver us! What for did ye fetch Fred in here, lying underfoot and hindering a’ the work?” she said sharply. “Pit him back i’ the cogie room!”

  “He was freezing in there,” said Dido. “And nothing had been done for his hurt foot. And he has a black eye—”

  Mrs. McClan looked as if she had plenty to say about this, but a bell rang from above and she whisked away, snapping, “The Eagles is no’ Holyrood Palace, I’ll have ye remember!”

  Dido had no idea what Holyrood Palace was, but she certainly found no resemblance between the Eagles and Saint James’s Palace.

  When Mrs. McClan reappeared she was so moithered that she paid no heed to Fred, who had packed himself into a niche with the brooms and brushes.

  “Anither of the Residents is in poor skin … and I must away for a converse with the Reverend about Mr. McClan’s funeral on Thursday.…”

  “What if somebody rings a bell?”

  “They must wait, that’s all. Any case, all their doors are lockit.”

  “Hadn’t I better have a key?”

  “Och, guide us, no! What next?—If my son Desmond should ring, ye can take him up some deener. He’s the bell number twenty-one. His door’s no’ lockit.”

  “What about the Residents’ dinner?”

  “Oh, don’t fash me, girl! They can e’en manage without for a while.”

  And Mrs. McClan wrapped herself in a voluminous tartan cloak with a hood and left the house.

  Dido gave the small boy Fred a bowl of oatcake and hot milk.

  “How old are ye, Fred?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m a foundling. Left on a doorstep wrapped in a napkin as a babby. No one knows for sure how old I am.”

  Dido looked at Fred very keenly indeed.

  “You were just a baby? Nothing to show where you came from?”

  “Nary a thing.”

  “Where is that napkin now?”

  “Dear knows. Mrs. McClan probably used it for a floorcloth.”

  “Have you always lived with the McClans?”

  “Always,” he sighed.

  “Have they been kind to ye?”

  “Yes”—faintly.

  Dido found this fairly hard to believe.

  “So how did you get that black eye? And the cut on your cheek?”

  “A log fell on me!” he gasped. “Logs are aye falling on me. Don’t say owt about the black eye to Missus—or—or to Desmond—don’t!”

  Piers had come in. He and Dido looked at one another over Fred’s head. Neither said a word.

  At this moment a loud angry bell pealed. Dido looked at the bell indicator on the kitchen wall and saw that number twenty-one was twitching.

  “Reckon that’s son Desmond,” she said. “I’ll go. You keep stirring the stew, Woodlouse, and don’t let it bubble. Maybe our friend would eat a bit more oat-and-milk.”

  The stairs led up from the entrance hall. At the foot was a table and under it lay a bunch of keys. Mrs McClan had either forgotten or dropped them.

  “Guess I’ll take a peek at some of those Residents,” muttered Dido, and scooped up the keys. She raced up the stairs two at a time and was faced with a choice of two passages, one straight ahead, one leading to the right. Rooms entered from the right-hand passages would have windows facing the waterfront; the passage straight ahead would have rooms looking back on to the hill.

  “Those’ll be the Residents’,” Dido reckoned. “There’s ten on each side. Croopus, what a long passage!”

  The keys and the doors were numbered. She found number one on her right, gently opened it, and peered in. The room, nearly dark, very small, just held a bed, a chair, and a washstand. The figure on the bed was snoring.

  “So I’ll leave ye in peace,” whispered Dido, and closed the door.

  Several more rooms had sleeping occupants. But in one room there was an angry old man whose lack of teeth did not prevent his loosing a stream of reproaches on Dido.

  “I’m ee-ing for me ee-er—arvin—ee-ing—ang ye!”

  “Won’t be long, won’t be long,” Dido promised.

  Two or three old ladies wailed that they were “sair, sair hungry, fair famished!”

  And one, with a very bad cough, clung piteously to Dido’s hand, weeping and sobbing, “Dinna leave me, lassie, dinna leave me wi’ that auld harridan!”

  With a heavy heart Dido returned to room number twenty-one.

  Here she found a very different scene. The room was much bigger and was furnished with armchairs and a dressing table. It looked onto the waterfront and was illuminated by several candles. Surprisingly, half a dozen portraits of King Richard hung on the walls. How queer, thought Dido. Why should they want all those pictures of King Dick?

  An indignant figure was bouncing about on the bed.

  “Where the deuce have you been all this while? And who the purple blazes are you?”

  “I’m the new cook. Are you Desmond?”

  “Of course I am, thick-head! Where’s my dinner? Where’s Ma?”

  “Gone to see the Reverend. Do you want some inky-pinky?”

  “No I certainly don’t! I don’t eat the hogwash that Ma deals out to the old death’s-heads. Ye can bring me some smoked salmon, three slices of haggis, a piece of Edinburgh bun—a big piece—a bunch of grapes, and a noggin of Highland Malt.”

  Dido found it difficult to understand what he was saying, not because he lacked teeth, like the old man in number seven, but because, mysteriously, his face was covered by a plaster mask, with holes for nose, mouth, and eyes.

  “Your mother said you had tonsillitis,” she said. “Is that how they treat it?”

  “None of your business!” he snapped. “You bring me up my dinner and look sharp about it!”

  “Yes, yes. Shan’t be long.”

  “Send that useless little Fred up.”

  “Can’t, he’s got a bad foot.”

  “Bad foot my——! I’ll bad-foot him.… And send up Ma, as soon as she gets back.”

  Dido looked into one more room before going downstairs, and was rather startled to find a dead man lying there with one candle burning at his feet; his face was strangely calm and waxen; it seemed as much a mask as the one on his son’s face next door.

  On the wall, half a dozen more portraits of the King.

  This is a right spooky place, Dido decided; most of the folk here seem more dead than alive—let alone the feller that really is dead; and if little Fred is who I think he is, the sooner we get him out of here the better, before they starve or mistreat him to death; he must be real stouthearted to have lasted so long. The time he’s spent in this dismal ken, it’d be enough to finish most folk.

  While Dido was assembling the
salmon and haggis (which she found in the pantry) and the grapes and Highland Malt (which she took to be whisky), Mrs. McClan returned.

  “Ah, that’s for my son—verra guid. But ye have omitted the Edinburgh bun—ye’ll find it in the crock yonder. Ach, let him have three slices, the poor lad is weak from his ailment.”

  Dido did not think that Desmond McClan looked at all weak, and he was plainly prepared to ignore the vegetarian strictures of St. Vinnipag, but she cut off another piece of bun, which was a loaf of solid raisins wrapped in dough.

  When she came back from delivering Desmond’s dinner, she said,

  “Shall I take up trays to the Residents now?”

  “Save us, no!”

  To Dido’s amazement, Mrs. McClan was assembling on one large tray twenty very small plates. On each was a quarter potato, a small dribble of gravy, a piece of carrot about the size of a threepenny piece, and a quarter of a cold hard-boiled egg.

  “Is that all they get?”

  “That is all they need!” snarled Mrs. McClan. “Auld folks’ digestive systems are gey delicate! They do not need heavy meals. Now, while I’m up admeenistering their deener, ye can be pitting twenty prunes on those—” She pointed to a pile of tiny dishes.

  “Some of them seem too weak to eat,” said Dido doubtfully.

  “Mind yer own business, hinny! I have been running this boardinghouse for the last twenty years!”

  And I wonder how many of the poor old Residents you have polished off in that time, Dido said, but not aloud, as Mrs. McClan picked up the massive tray and started upstairs.

  SEVEN

  After two days working for Mrs. McClan, Dido and Piers wondered how the woman had ever managed without them.

  There had been, previously, a servant-maid called Hennie, they learned, but she was gey flighty, Mrs. McClan said; she would go oyster gathering on the far side of the loch on her afternoon off, “and the Hobyahs got her.”

  “What are the Hobyahs?” Dido asked.

  “Pesky wee gangrels,” Mrs. McClan said vaguely. “They’ll no worrit you if you don’t worrit them. Mostly they bide across the loch—’tis likely they are frit of the Monster.”

  “And what is the monster? What does he do?”

  “Och, he’s not often seen—not above twice in a twelvemonth. He bides in the loch—or, some folk say, he has a cleugh in the brae.”

  “What is a cleugh? What is a brae?”

  “Ach, leave speering at me, girl! Can’t ye see I’ve twenty things to do this instant minute?”

  And Mrs. McClan went off to give the Residents their breakfast, one teaspoonful of oatmeal and half a pinch of tea.

  Dido was left to guess that a cleugh in the brae meant a cave or den somewhere in the hills. Nor did she and Piers get any clear notion of what the Monster might be; the inn sign of the Monster’s Arms showed a creature like an octopus with hands at the end of each of its eight tentacles. It looked highly improbable, though undoubtedly sinister and threatening.

  “I don’t believe the man who painted that sign had ever seen the Monster,” said Dido. “It isn’t a bit like that glimpse of the beast we got when the children threw their oat buns into the loch.”

  Meanwhile, another of the Residents had died, and Mrs. McClan was arranging with the Reverend Knockwinnock for yet another funeral.

  An old man was to be seen out in the churchyard digging graves.

  “And he has to be paid, forbye,” grumbled Mrs. McClan. “My husband would ha’ done it for nothing.… And he’ll want his morn-piece as well.… You, Dido, take him oot a bittie oatcake and a mug of mint tea—not too strong, mind!”

  When Dido obeyed this instruction—the snack was received with loud complaints—“Beggars’ bite and gnats’ piss—trust mean old Phemie McClan!”—she noticed a long line of small plain gravestones whose occupants were all described as “Sadly Missed Resident of the Eagles Guesthouse.” Plainly, Mrs. McClan did not reckon to keep her customers long.

  “Aye, aye.” The old man nodded, handing back the empty mug. “Phemie don’t keep ’em langsyne—’tis quick come, quick go, in her book. Reckon though she willna be so speedy now her man’s underground—” He pointed at the grave he was digging. “Though she’ll train up young Desmond quick enough, nae doot.”

  Dido felt sure that he was right.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I think somebody is waving at me over the hedge.”

  “Aye, ’tis the witch. Ever one, she is, for poking her neb into other folks’ business. Well, ’tis true, Phemie willna let her in the hoose after she pit in a report to the Provost telling that the guests at the Eagles were being starvit to death. She’s a social worker and health veesitor, ye see, forbye she’s a witch as well.”

  Dido was already halfway across the graveyard, so the old man went back to his digging.

  A hand had beckoned, and a handkerchief had fluttered in among the high, thick windbreak of flowering gorse that divided the churchyard from the golf course. Following a narrow path through the prickly rampart, Dido came out on the smooth green turf of the fairway.

  “Here!” whispered a voice. “In the bunker! Keep down so we can’t be seen from the road.”

  Obeying, Dido climbed down into a sandy hollow.

  “Now! Before you do anything else, sing that song again?”

  “Song? What song?”

  “The one you sang when the train was pulling up.”

  It was the woman in the red dress who had shared their picnic on the train—who had introduced herself as Aldith Something-or-other. Here she was, still in her red dress, still clutching her golf club.

  “What song was that? I don’t remember.”

  “Oh, don’t, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten!”

  The girl—no, she was a woman, really—looked so utterly distraught that Dido racked her brain.

  “You say the train was stopping—oh, yes, I remember, the station announcer was saying something … and what she said reminded me of one of my pa’s tunes … it went like this—”

  And Dido sang:

  “I love you in the springtime and I love you in the fall,

  To love you is my fate.

  But shall we ever meet?

  For here my train will terminate.…

  “Is that the song you mean?”

  The woman’s face was that of a person who has just been saved from falling over a cliff.

  “That’s it! That is it! That’s the one!”

  She tapped it out with her fingers as if the sand they were sitting on was a keyboard.

  “Sing it just once again and I’ll have it noted down in my mind. But not too loud. We don’t want Phemie McClan out here after you.”

  After she had sung the verse a second time, Dido asked: “Why is it so important to you?”

  “I have been trying to remember that tune for twenty-five years.”

  “But why? I know it’s a very teasing tune—all Pa’s tunes are like that—but why’s it so tarnally important to you?”

  “Once I undertook a job—a task—it was necessary to stay in one place and listen—to hear—something that somebody was going to say. But I heard this tune being played on a barrel-organ in the street outside the window. I’m mad for tunes. They haunt me, specially when they are only half remembered. And this was one I’d heard before and half forgotten—it was driving me crazy.”

  Dido nodded. “I know. I’ve felt like that with tunes. Specially Pa’s tunes, they are so catchy, but not at all simple—”

  “That’s it exactly!” said the woman. “So I ran out, leaving my post, and the organ and the street singer had gone already—I never heard the tune again—and when I got back it was too late—the words I should have heard had been said—or not said. It was too late,” she repeated. And she went on, half to herself, “Nothing so silent as the mouth of one just dead. There were these three saints, you see, Saint Arfish, Saint Ardust, and Saint Arling. They left instructions that their dying words were to be w
ritten down. And kept secret for a period of time. The first for three years, the second for nine years, the third for twenty-one years.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, how should I know why? The first saint died cursing, the second died laughing.”

  “Why?”

  “The curse of Saint Arfish was tremendous. ‘May you fall so ill that if the sea were made of ink, it would not be enough for your doctor to write you a prescription!’ ”

  “Croopus! Who did he curse like that?”

  “That was why Saint Ardust died laughing. Saint Arfish forgot to fill in the name of whoever he was cursing, so the curse failed to go off. And who it was meant for, we shall never know. That was why Saint Ardust died laughing.”

  “What were his dying words?”

  “He never had time for them.”

  “What about the third saint? Saint Arling?”

  “That is what we don’t know. And never shall! Because of my wicked negligence, running out into the street to try to catch that tune.”

  “Oh,” said Dido. “I see. Well, I guess you just have to learn to live with that.” And after a minute she added, “Did you know that Mrs. McClan’s husband just died?”

  “I guessed that might be so. Since the old man, not Angus McClan, was digging the graves. Usually Angus would be doing the digging. What about Desmond?”

  “Recovering from tonsillitis.”

  “Humph! More likely phizectomy!”

  “What in the world’s that?”

  “Angus McClan had a talent for changing people’s faces.”

  “Unh?”

  “He could give you a new face so your mother wouldn’t know you—and somebody else’s mother would think you were her dear daughter.”

  “Croopus.” Dido thought about this for several minutes. “So that’s who the dead man’s face reminded me of. He’d done it to himself. But not well enough. And that’s why he had all those pictures of King Dick on the walls of his bedroom.…”

  “Angus was a face smith.”

  Dido jumped up. “I better go back—or Mrs. M will give me what for and ask where I’ve been—”

  “Listen! We must meet again. I want to talk to you about—something. And the boy who was with you in the train. But Mrs. McClan mustn’t know. Can you come out tonight?”