by Angie Sage
Watched by six horrified little boys, the Matron Midwife takes a huge roll of bandages out of her pocket and begins to wrap Septimus, starting with his feet and expertly working upward, until she reaches his head, where she stops for a moment and checks the baby’s breathing. Satisfied, she continues with the bandaging, leaving his nose peeking out, until he looks like a tiny Egyptian mummy.
Suddenly the Matron Midwife makes for the door, taking Septimus with her. Sarah wills herself to wake from her drugged sleep just in time to see the Midwife throw open the door and bump into a shocked Silas, who has his cloak tightly wrapped around him. The Midwife pushes him aside and runs off down the corridor.
The corridors of the Ramblings are lit with brightly burning torches, which cast flickering shadows across the dark figure of the Matron Midwife as she runs, holding Septimus close. After a while she emerges into the snowy night and slows her pace, looking about anxiously. Hunched over the baby, she hurries along the deserted narrow streets until she reaches a wide-open space.
Boy 412 gasped. It was the dreaded Young Army Parade Ground.
The large dark figure moves over the snowy expanse of the parade ground, scuttling like a black beetle across a tablecloth. The guard at the barracks door salutes the Midwife and lets her in.
Inside the dismal barracks the Matron Midwife slows her pace. She walks carefully down a steep flight of narrow steps, which lead to a dank basement room full of empty cots lined up in ranks. It is what will soon become the Young Army nursery where all the orphaned and unwanted boy children from the Castle will be raised. (The girls will go to the Domestic Service Training Hall.) Already there are four unfortunate occupants. Three are triplet sons of a Guard who dared to make a joke about the Supreme Custodian’s beard. The fourth is the Matron Midwife’s own baby boy, six months old and being babysat in the nursery while she is at work. The babysitter, an old woman with a persistent cough, is slumped in her chair, dozing fitfully between coughing bouts. The Matron Midwife quickly places Septimus in an empty cot and unwinds his bandages. Septimus yawns and unclenches his tiny fists.
He is alive.
Jenna, Nicko, Boy 412 and Aunt Zelda stared at the scene before them in the pond, realizing that what the Apprentice had said now seemed to be all too true. Boy 412 had a nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach. He hated seeing the Young Army barracks again.
In the semidarkness of the Young Army nursery the Matron Midwife sits down wearily. She keeps glancing anxiously at the door as if waiting for someone to come in. No one appears.
A minute or two later she heaves herself up from her chair and goes over to the cot where her own baby is crying and picks the child up. At that moment the door is flung open, and the Matron Midwife wheels around, white-faced, frightened.
A tall woman in black stands in the doorway. Over her black, well-pressed robes she wears the starched white apron of a nurse, but around her waist is a bloodred belt showing the three black stars of DomDaniel.
She has come for Septimus Heap.
The Apprentice didn’t like what he saw at all. He didn’t want to see the lowlife family he was rescued from—they meant nothing to him. He didn’t want to see what had happened to him as a baby either. What did that matter to him now? And he was sick of standing out in the cold with the enemy.
Angrily, the Apprentice kicked a duck sitting beside his feet, and booted the bird straight into the water. Bert landed with a splash in the middle of the pond, and the picture shattered into a thousand dancing fragments of light.
The spell was broken.
The Apprentice ran for it. Down to the Mott, along the path, racing as fast as he could, heading for the thin black canoe. He didn’t get far. Bert, who had not taken kindly to being kicked into the pond, was after him. The Apprentice heard the flapping of the duck’s powerful wings only a moment before he felt the peck of her beak on the back of his neck and the tug of his robes almost choking him. The duck took hold of his hood and pulled him toward Nicko.
“Oh, dear,” said Aunt Zelda, sounding worried.
“I wouldn’t bother about him,” said Nicko angrily as he caught up with the Apprentice and got hold of him.
“I wasn’t worried about him,” said Aunt Zelda. “I was just hoping that Bert didn’t strain her beak.”
38
DEFROSTING
The Apprentice sat huddled in the corner by the fire, with Bert still hanging on to one of his dangling damp sleeves. Jenna had locked all the doors and Nicko had locked the windows, leaving Boy 412 to keep watch over the Apprentice while they went to see how the Boggart was.
The Boggart lay at the bottom of the tin bath, a small mound of damp brown fur against the white of the sheet that Aunt Zelda had laid underneath him. He half opened his eyes and regarded his visitors with a bleary, unfocused gaze.
“Hello, Boggart. Are you feeling better?” asked Jenna.
The Boggart did not respond. Aunt Zelda dipped a sponge into a bucket of warm water and gently bathed him.
“Just keeping Boggart damp,” she said. “A dry Boggart is not a happy Boggart.”
“He’s not looking good, is he?” Jenna whispered to Nicko as they tiptoed quietly out of the kitchen with Aunt Zelda.
The Hunter, still poised outside the kitchen door, regarded Jenna with a baleful stare as she appeared. His piercing pale blue eyes locked on to her and followed her across the room. But the rest of him was as immobile as ever.
Jenna felt the stare and glanced up. A cold shiver shot through her. “He’s looking at me,” she said. “His eyes are following me.”
“Bother,” tutted Aunt Zelda. “He’s beginning to DeFrost. I’d better take this before it causes any more trouble.”
Aunt Zelda pulled the silver pistol out of the Hunter’s Frozen hand. His eyes flashed angrily as she expertly broke open the gun and removed a small silver ball from its chamber.
“Here you are,” Aunt Zelda said, handing the silver bullet to Jenna. “It has been looking for you for ten years, and now its search is over. You are safe now.”
Jenna smiled uncertainly and rolled the solid silver sphere around her palm with a sense of revulsion; although, she could not help but admire how perfect it was. Almost perfect. She lifted it up and squinted at a tiny nick in the ball. To her surprise there were two letters carved into the silver: I.P.
“What’s I.P. mean?” Jenna asked Aunt Zelda. “Look, it’s here on the bullet.”
Aunt Zelda did not reply for a moment. She knew what the letters meant, but she was unsure about telling Jenna.
“I.P.,” murmured Jenna, thinking it over. “I.P….”
“Infant Princess,” said Aunt Zelda. “A named bullet. A named bullet will always find its target. It doesn’t matter how or when, but find you it will. As yours has done. But not in the way they intended.”
“Oh,” said Jenna quietly. “So the other one, the one for my mother, did it have…”
“Yes, it did. It had Q on it.”
“Ah. Can I keep the pistol too?” asked Jenna.
Aunt Zelda looked surprised. “Well, I suppose so,” she said. “If you really want to.”
Jenna took the gun and held it as she had seen both the Hunter and the Assassin do, feeling its heavy weight in her hand and the strange sense of power holding it gave her.
“Thank you,” she said to Aunt Zelda, handing the pistol back to her. “Can you keep it safe for me. For now?”
The Hunter’s eyes followed Aunt Zelda as she marched the pistol off to her Unstable Potions and Partikular Poisons cupboard and locked it away. They followed her back again as she walked up to him and felt his ears. The Hunter looked furious. His eyebrows twitched, and his eyes flashed angrily, but nothing else moved.
“Good,” said Aunt Zelda, “his ears are still Frozen. He can’t hear what we say yet. We’ve got to decide what we’ll do with him before he DeFrosts.”
“Can’t you just ReFreeze him?” asked Jenna.
Aunt Zelda shook h
er head. “No,” she replied regretfully. “You shouldn’t ReFreeze someone once they start to DeFrost. It’s not safe for them. They can get Freezer Burn. Or else go horribly soggy. Not a nice sight. But still, the Hunter’s a dangerous man and he won’t give up the Hunt. Ever. And somehow we have to stop him hunting us.”
Jenna was thinking.
“We need,” she said, “to make him forget everything. Even who he is.” She chuckled. “We could make him think he’s a lion tamer or something.”
“And then he’d join a circus and find out that he wasn’t, just after he’d put his head into a lion’s mouth,” Nicko finished.
“We must not use Magyk to endanger life,” Aunt Zelda reminded them.
“He could be a clown, then,” said Jenna. “He’s scary enough.”
“Well, I have heard there’s a circus due in the Port any day now. I’m sure he’d find work.” Aunt Zelda smiled. “They take all sorts, I’m told.”
Aunt Zelda fetched an old, tattered book called Magyk Memories.
“You’re good at this,” she said, handing the book to Boy 412. “Can you find the right Charm for me? I think it’s called Rogue Recollections.”
Boy 412 leafed though the musty old book. It was one of those where most of the Charms had been lost, but toward the end of the book he found what he was looking for: a small, knotted handkerchief with some smudgy black writing along the hem.
“Good,” said Aunt Zelda. “Perhaps you could do the spell for us, please?”
“Me?” asked Boy 412, surprised.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” replied Aunt Zelda. “My eyesight isn’t up to it in this light.” She reached up and checked the Hunter’s ears. They were warm. The Hunter glared at her and narrowed his eyes in that familiar cold stare. No one took any notice.
“He can hear now,” she said. “Best get this done before he can speak too.”
Boy 412 carefully read the spell’s instructions. Then he held the knotted handkerchief and said,
Whatever your Historie may be
’tis lost to You when you see Me.
Boy 412 waved the handkerchief in front of the Hunter’s angry eyes; then he undid the knot. With that, the Hunter’s eyes went blank. His gaze was no longer threatening, but bewildered and maybe a little frightened.
“Good,” said Aunt Zelda. “That seems to have worked well. Can you do the next bit now, please?”
Boy 412 said quietly,
So listen to your new-sprung Ways,
Remember Now your diff’rent Days.
Aunt Zelda planted herself in front of the Hunter and addressed him firmly. “This,” she told him, “is the story of your life. You were born in a hovel down in the Port.”
“You were a horrible child,” Jenna told him. “And you had pimples.”
“No one liked you,” added Nicko.
The Hunter began to look very unhappy.
“Except your dog,” said Jenna, who was beginning to feel just a bit sorry for him.
“Your dog died,” said Nicko.
The Hunter looked devastated.
“Nicko,” remonstrated Jenna. “Don’t be mean.”
“Me? What about him?”
And so the Hunter’s horribly tragic life unfolded before him. It was riddled with unfortunate coincidences, stupid mistakes and highly embarrassing moments that made his newly DeFrosted ears go red at their sudden recollection. At last the sad tale was finished off with his unhappy Apprenticeship to an irascible clown known to all who worked for him as Dog Breath.
The Apprentice watched with a mixture of glee and horror. The Hunter had tormented him for so long, and the Apprentice was glad to see someone was at last getting the better of him. But he could not help but wonder what they were planning to do to him.
As the sorry tale of the Hunter’s past ended, Boy 412 reknotted the handkerchief and said,
What was your Life has gone away,
Another Past does now hold sway.
With some effort, they carried the Hunter outside like a large, unwieldy plank and set him up beside the Mott, so that he could finish DeFrosting out of the way. The Magog paid him no attention whatsoever, having just scooped its thirty-eighth Shield Bug out of the mud and being preoccupied with whether to take the wings off this one before it liquified it or not.
“Give me a nice garden gnome any day,” said Aunt Zelda, regarding her new and, she hoped, temporary garden ornament with distaste. “But that’s a job well done. Now all we’ve got to sort out is the Apprentice.”
“Septimus…” mused Jenna. “I can’t believe it. What will Mum and Dad say? He’s so horrible.”
“Well, I suppose growing up with DomDaniel hasn’t done him any good,” said Aunt Zelda.
“Boy 412 grew up in the Young Army, but he’s okay,” Jenna pointed out. “He would never have shot the Boggart.”
“I know,” agreed Aunt Zelda. “But maybe the Apprentice, er, Septimus will improve with time.”
“Maybe,” said Jenna doubtfully.
Sometime later, in the early hours of the morning, when Boy 412 had carefully tucked the green rock that Jenna gave him under his quilt to keep it warm and close to him—and just as they were at last settling down to sleep—there was a hesitant knock on the door.
Jenna sat up, scared. Who was it? She nudged Nicko and Boy 412 awake. Then she crept over to the window and silently drew back one of the shutters.
Nicko and Boy 412 stood by the door, armed with a broom and a heavy lamp.
The Apprentice sat up in his dark corner by the fire and smiled a smug smile. DomDaniel had sent a rescue party for him.
It was no rescue party, but Jenna went pale when she saw who it was.
“It’s the Hunter,” she whispered.
“He’s not coming in,” said Nicko. “No way.”
But the Hunter knocked again, louder.
“Go away!” Jenna yelled at him.
Aunt Zelda came out from tending the Boggart.
“See what he wants,” she said, “and we can send him on his way.”
So, against all her instincts, Jenna opened the door to the Hunter.
She hardly recognized him. Although he still wore the uniform of a Hunter, he no longer looked like one. He had gathered his thick green cloak around him like a beggar with a blanket, and he stood in the doorway apologetically and slightly stooped.
“I am sorry to trouble you gentle folk at this late hour,” he murmured. “But I fear I have lost my way. I wonder if you could direct me to the Port?”
“That way,” said Jenna curtly, pointing out over the marshes.
The Hunter looked confused. “I am not very good at finding my way, miss. Where exactly would that be?”
“Follow the moon,” Aunt Zelda told him. “She will guide you.”
The Hunter bowed humbly.
“Thank you kindly, Madam. I wonder if I could trouble you by asking if there might be a circus due in town? I have hopes of obtaining a position there as a buffoon.”
Jenna smothered a giggle.
“Yes, there is, as it happens,” Aunt Zelda told him. “Er, would you wait a minute?” She disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a small bag containing some bread and cheese.
“Take this,” she said, “and good luck with your new life.”
The Hunter bowed again.
“Why, thank you kindly, Madam,” he said and walked down to the Mott, passing the sleeping Magog and his thin black canoe without a flicker of recognition, and out over the bridge.
Four silent figures stood at the doorway and watched the solitary figure of the Hunter pick his way uncertainly across the Marram Marshes toward his new life in
FISHHEAD AND DURDLE’S
TRAVELING CIRCUS
AND MENAGERIE
until a cloud covered the moon and the marshes were once again plunged into darkness.
39
THE APPOINTMENT
Later that night the Apprentice escaped through the cat
tunnel.
Bert, who still had all the instincts of a cat, liked to go wandering at night, and Aunt Zelda would leave the door on a one-way CharmLock. This allowed Bert to go out, but nothing to come in. Not even Bert. Aunt Zelda was very careful about stray Brownies and Marsh Wraiths.
So, when everyone except for the Apprentice had fallen asleep and Bert had decided to go out for the night, the Apprentice thought that he would follow her. It was a tight squeeze, but the Apprentice, who was as thin as a snake and twice as wriggly, wormed his way through the narrow space. As he did so, the Darke Magyk which clung to his robes DisEnchanted the cat tunnel. Soon his flustered face emerged from the tunnel into the chill night air.
Bert met him with a sharp peck on the nose, but the Apprentice was not deterred. He was much more scared of getting stuck in the cat tunnel, with his feet still inside the house and his head on the outside, than he was of Bert. He had a feeling that no one would be in much of a hurry to pull him out if he did get stuck. So he ignored the angry duck and, with a huge effort, wriggled free.
The Apprentice made straight for the landing stage, closely pursued by Bert, who tried to grab his collar again, but this time the Apprentice was ready for her. Angrily, he swatted her away, sending her crashing to the ground and badly bruising a wing.
The Magog was lying full length in the canoe, sleeping while it digested all fifty-six Shield Bugs. The Apprentice warily stepped over it. To his relief the creature did not stir—digestion was something a Magog took very seriously. The smell of Magog slime caught in the back of the Apprentice’s throat, but he picked up the slime-covered paddle and was soon away down the Mott, heading out toward the maze of winding channels that crisscrossed the Marram Marshes and would take him to the Deppen Ditch.
As he left the cottage behind and traveled into the wide moonlit expanse of the marshes, the Apprentice began to feel a little uneasy. With the Magog sleeping, the Apprentice felt horribly unprotected and he remembered all the terrifying stories he had heard about the marshes at night. He paddled the canoe as quietly as he was able to, afraid of disturbing something that may not want to be disturbed. Or, even worse, something that might be waiting to be disturbed. All around him he could hear the nighttime noises of the marsh. He heard the muffled underground shrieking of a pack of Brownies as they pulled an unsuspecting Marsh Cat down into the Quake Ooze. And then there was a nasty scrabbling and squelching noise as two large Water Nixies tried to clamp their sucker pads onto the bottom of the canoe and chew their way into it, but they slipped off soon enough thanks to the remnants of the Magog’s slime.
