by Mary Norton
"I do know," said a voice. "They told me at your lodging."
Emelius slowly drew his fingers from his eyes. He stared round the cell. It was empty.
His fear, perhaps, was turning him crazy. The voice had seemed real, not very loud, and quite matter-of-fact. And then he saw her—a face at the window, and two hands with whitened knuckles grasping the bars. The face stared at him from under a black cowl, and, at first, he did not recognize the shadowed eye sockets and the lips compressed with effort, but then the long nose leaped, as it were, into his fear-dimmed vision, a pink-tipped banner of indignation and righteous wrath.
"Such a time getting here," she complained testily. "Asking, asking. And such rudeness."
Still Emelius did not speak. He was shivering as if, suddenly, he had come alive to the cold.
"Not a soul that seems to understand the king's English," went on the angry voice. She was panting slightly as if she held herself up by her own efforts. "I don't see how you've stood it. And the dirt, the untidiness, the smells ... but we won't go into that now—" She slipped out of sight with a sharp exclamation. Then, after a moment, she appeared again. "Lost my foothold," she explained. "I'm in a very awkward position. But you're locked in, and there's no room for the bed."
Emelius moistened his lips with his tongue. His eyes were fixed on the face at the window.
"They swam me in the horsepond," he moaned, as if he were talking to himself. "In the horsepond—"
"Well, never mind," said Miss Price briskly. "Don't dwell on it!" She looked down, and Emelius heard her say indistinctly, "Well, move your finger, Carey. It's your own fault. I didn't mean to tread on it." There was a pause, then he heard Miss Price say, "Yes, he's all right. Very wet. But the cell's too small for the bed." She peered in at him. "Just a minute," she said, and disappeared.
He heard the gentle sound of voices. He lay back. Thankfulness crept up from his toes, up and up, until his heart swelled from it, and it forced tears from his eyes—hot painful tears that squeezed out from between his closed lids. Miss Price was here. She would save him. Miss Price never undertook a thing she did not finish, and Miss Price did everything so well.
After a while she appeared again. "Now," she said, "you must pull yourself together. We're not going to let you be burned, but we can't stay here.
It's broad daylight, and I'm standing on the bed rail—"
"Don't go!" begged Emelius.
"I must go, for the moment, and find a place for the bed. There's going to be a storm. And it was such nice weather when we left home."
"What shall I do?" gasped Emelius.
"There's nothing for you to do at the moment, and there are two men at the main door playing dice. You must keep calm and try not to fuss." She looked at him speculatively. "Tidy yourself up a bit and you'll feel better." Then, once more, she disappeared.
This time she did not come back, and, after a while, Emelius, because Miss Price had told him to, began picking long strands of green slime off his fur-trimmed robe. He found a water beetle up his sleeve, and his shoes were full of mud. Yes, she would save him, but how? It was not going to be easy. The barred window, sunk deep in the wall, was only a foot square, and the locked door was made of iron.
9. And Yet So Far
"She's an awful long time coming," said Carey.
The three children sat on the bed in a disused cow byre. The ground was trodden and dusty, and a pile of grayish hay rotted in the corner. Through the broken door they could see a bleak field below a dark and lowering sky. It was a dismal place but, as Miss Price had pointed out, a secluded one in which to hide the bed. She had gone off, wrapped in her black cloak, broomstick in one hand and sword in the other, to see what could be done for Emelius.
"She's been gone an hour, about," said Charles, walking to the door. The dark sky had a whitish streak in it, which shed an unreal, livid light on the trees and hedges. There was a sudden quivering brightness. Charles dodged back as a rumbling arch of thunder unrolled itself above the roof. "It startled me," he said.
"Do you think we ought to go and look for her?" asked Carey.
"What about the bed? Someone ought to stay and watch it."
"Nobody will come here," said Carey. "They're all gone to the burning. I think that we ought all to go or all to stay. Not split up."
Charles looked thoughtfully across the field toward the gate that led into the road. "Let's all go then," he said.
At the doorway Carey glanced back at the bed. It stood incongruously bright, with its legs sunk deep in dust and broken straw. "I wonder if we shall see it again," she thought to herself. "I wonder what we are letting ourselves in for."
As they walked along, in the gloomy light, between the uneven houses and their deserted gardens, they looked around them curiously. It was not very different from parts of England they knew. New houses squatted beside old ones. An inn sign creaked in a sudden gust of wind, but the inn was deserted. Everyone had gone to the burning.
"Smithfield," said Charles, "where the meat market is. It's really part of London, but it looks like country."
Horses and carts were tethered to posts. There were a great many half-starved cats about and rough-coated, mangy-looking dogs, which ran slyly down the alleyways, but there were no people. Old bones and rags and broken pan lids lay in the gutters, and there was a strong smell of tanning. As they walked, they began to hear the murmur of a crowd.
"Look!" said Carey in a low voice.
A richly dressed man was leading a horse out of a stable yard. He wore leather boots or leggings, which came up to his thighs, and a skirted coat. Lace fell over his wrists as far as his knucklebones, and a great dark wig moved heavily on his shoulders. As they came abreast of him, they smelled his perfume, a strange, rich, spicy smell, which mingled oddly with the stench of the tannery. Preparing to mount, he stared at them wonderingly. His pale face was full of disapproval. Carey nervously put up her hand to cover her safety pin, but he was not looking at their clothes. Something deeper seemed to worry him. "A poor wretch burned at the stake," he said as they passed close beside him, "a fine sight for children!"
Carey stared back at him with frightened eyes. She felt as you always feel when a complete stranger speaks to you angrily. As the clatter of his hooves died away behind them, the children walked in silence. They felt guilty, as if it were their fault that Emelius was to be burned alive.
Then suddenly the road opened into a square, or green, and they came upon the crowd. It was like a painting Carey had seen somewhere, or like a historical film, except it was more colorful than a painting and dirtier than a historical film. Boys had climbed trees and railings; every window was full of people. Above the babble of talk certain voices were heard calling some indistinct, monotonous phrase. Carey jumped when just behind her a woman yodeled:
"Fair lemons and oranges.
Oranges and citrons."
They could get in no closer. They were jammed close beside a fat woman with three children and what seemed to be the railings of a cattle pen. The fat woman, who wore a white cap round her red face, with a hat on top of it, was breaking a cake for her children. It smelled of cinnamon and made Carey feel hungry.
Carey put her foot on the bottom rail of the cattle pen and pushed herself up between the knees of the boys who sat on top of it. Ah, now she could see the stake! It was raised only a little above the crowd. Two men with muskets slung on their backs were busy with ropes. When they moved aside, she saw Emelius, a limp, sagged figure. He was tied round the chest. She could not see any lower than his knees. She could not see the fagots. There was no sign of Miss Price.
Charles climbed up beside her. She heard him exclaim when he saw Emelius, and then Paul was pulling at the skirt of her dressing gown.
"Could I have a toffee apple?" he said.
Carey stepped down. Paul was too young to see Emelius burn, or even be told about it. "We haven't any money, Paul," Carey explained kindly, "to buy toffee apples," but she looked
round and there indeed was a woman with a tray slung round her neck selling toffee apples right and left—toffee apples and lollipops on sticks. The woman with the three children gave Paul a piece of cinnamon cake. She stared at them curiously. "She notices our clothes," thought Carey.
Then a hush fell on the crowd. Someone up near the stake was speaking, but they could not see him, nor hear what he said. "They're going to start soon," announced Charles from his perch on the railing. Carey saw a thin trail of smoke. She climbed up beside Charles again to see, but it was only a man with a spluttering torch, which he held aloft as if waiting for an order. Someone else was speaking now. Carey glimpsed a long form in black, a lawyer, perhaps, or a clergyman.
The figure at the stake still sagged, the head hanging forward on the chest. "Miss Price ... Miss Price..." breathed Carey, clinging to the rail. "Save him. Oh please, save poor Emelius."
The voice finished speaking. The crowd became terribly silent. Other people tried to climb on the railing. All eyes were turned toward the stake. Suddenly there was a roll of drums. The man with the torch circled it about his head and flung it downward, in amongst the fagots.
Carey shrieked and jumped down off the railing, hiding her eyes. The roll of drums went on, swelling in intensity. Clouds of smoke rose up against the dark and threatening sky. A quivering flash and, for one livid second, the whole scene stood etched in lightning—lightning that played in forks across the gloomy sky—then the sound of drums was drowned in a crashing, earsplitting roll of thunder, roaring and trembling across the heavens until it seemed to shake the very earth on which they stood.
Then Carey heard shrieks and cries. She clambered, pushing for a foothold, upon the railing to see what had happened. Something seemed to be bending the crowd like a field of corn in wind, something of which they seemed afraid. The shrieks of the women shrilled and multiplied. There was a movement of pushing, of fighting, of panic. Carey pulled Paul beside her close against the railing. Paul began to cry.
"Charles," cried Carey, her voice breaking with excitement. "Look! Look!"
Something was skimming low over the crowd, a great black bird it seemed, which flew in narrowing circles and whose passage seemed to cut a swath in the frightened mob as it passed, as hair falls aside from the comb.
"It's she! It's Miss Price!" cried Carey. "Paul, it's Miss Price! Charles..."
People were pushing, screaming, rushing to get out of reach. Now, it was coming toward their corner, swooping low and steady on its curving flight. The fat woman shrieked and ran, dragging her children after her. The boys jumped down off the railing. "A witch, a witch!" they screamed hoarsely. "A witch on a broomstick!"
But Carey and Charles, holding Paul tight against them, kept their places. They gazed upward with anxious eyes at the black and fluttering figure that came toward them in the gloom. Shrouded and unrecognizable, it swept past, and an eerie wail, thin and terrifying, trailed behind it on the wind.
People had run away, down the side streets, down the alleys. There were spaces of empty trodden grass and littered dusty ground. A basket seller was collecting his stock, which rolled around in every direction, but he dropped it all again as the dark figure flew near him and ran "hell for leather" for the entrance of a tavern.
Now the children could see the stake quite clearly. The smoke had cleared, and red tongues of flame, licking their way upward through the fagots, shone weirdly in the leaden gloom. Emelius, bound round the chest and ankles, hung forward on his ropes.
"He's catching fire!" shrieked Carey. "Oh, Miss Price, hurry, hurry!"
Soldiers, who had acted as a cordon against the crowd, formed a group, training their muskets on the broomstick's flight. Only one remained beside the stake, and he seemed to be charging his gun, looking up fearfully from time to time as if he feared the dark swooping figure might come upon him from behind.
"Perhaps she's forgotten," Charles reminded Carey fearfully. "She burned the books."
There was a report, which echoed back against the houses. One of the soldiers had fired. Once more the lightning flashed, and thunder pealed across the angry sky. The square was empty now, save for the soldiers and the huddled group of children beside the cattle pen. The ground was scattered with litter. Benches, chairs, and stools—things that people had brought to stand on—lay overturned and broken.
As the flying figure approached the stake, the remaining soldier fled to join the others, clutching his musket. The broomstick and the sweeping black cloak seemed almost to touch the burning fagots when the children saw a sword flash.
"It's her father's sword," exclaimed Charles excitedly. "She's going to cut him free."
Carey was reminded, watching the awkward efforts to bring the broomstick within striking distance yet not too close, of a left-handed golfer trying to play polo.
"Oh, dear," she cried in an agony of fear. "She'll cut his head off."
Emelius, aware at last, twisted and leaned and strained at his cords in terrified efforts to escape the deadly thrusts. A gust of spark-filled smoke blew against his face, and the children saw him coughing. Still the attack continued.
"Careful," she shouted. "Please, oh please, Miss Price!"
Again there was a report, followed immediately by two others. The soldiers were firing. Carey, glancing fearfully at the bell-mouthed weapons, wondered how such guns could miss.
"They've got her," said Charles then, in his most reserved voice.
"No," cried Carey wildly, "no, they can't have!" Her eyes flew back to the stake, and she covered her mouth quickly to hold back a scream.
The broomstick was poised, motionless, shuddering, above the crackling wood. The sword dropped and stuck upright, quivering among the fagots. The broomstick wavered and sank downward toward the smoke and flame. Then, as they watched, painfully it seemed to pull itself free. It rose a little and made a limping, hesitating flight toward the head of a road leading out of the square. The soldiers turned slowly, keeping the fluttering object covered with their guns. Figures appeared in doorways. Several men, braver than the others, ventured into the street. All eyes were fixed on the black and tattered object that rose a little and then sank once more toward the ground, in painful hopping flight.
The children no longer watched the stake, where each second for Emelius became uncomfortably warmer; their eyes were fixed on the broomstick. They gripped each other in an agony of fear. Nothing seemed to matter in the world except Miss Price and her safety. As they watched, the broomstick rose a little. Jerkily swaying, rather drunkenly, as if it had lost its sense of direction, it made off down the street, at about the level of the first-floor windows.
Then a man threw a brick, and the soldiers fired again. The broomstick stopped in midair.
For about the twentieth part of a second the children saw the folds of the black cloak hang limp, before the whole equipage dropped like a stone. Then they could see it no more. People ran out of doorways, out of yards, out of alleys. Some were armed with staves, some with clubs; they saw one man, a butcher he must have been, with a large and shining chopper. All these people made for the spot where the broomstick had fallen. The narrow mouth of the street was choked with an ever-increasing crowd, composed mostly of boys and men. No one glanced at the stake or felt the sudden onslaught of the rain. It poured down suddenly, a slanting rushing sheet of water, mingling with the tears on Carey's face and turning the churned dust into mud.
"Miss Price ... Miss Price..." sobbed Carey, while the rain ran down her hair into the neck of her dressing gown. She hardly noticed Charles had left her side. She did not know how he had got there when she saw him clamber on the steaming fagots, which hissed and blackened under the downpour. She watched Charles seize the sword and chop at the ropes that bound Emelius. She saw Emelius fall forward on the piled wood, and the wood roll from under him. She saw Emelius hit the ground, and Charles climbing down from the stake, sword in hand. She saw Emelius picking himself up from the ground in a dazed way, his charred r
obe hanging in strips about his yellow-stockinged legs. She saw Charles urging him, talking to him, pulling him by the arm. Then Charles and Emelius were there beside her where she leaned with Paul against the cattle pen. Charles was pulling off Emelius's coat, so that he stood in shirt and breeches and wrinkled yellow stockings....
"Miss Price, Miss Price..." Carey went on sobbing.
"They won't recognize you so easily like that," Charles was explaining to Emelius. "You're not a bit burnt. Lucky your clothes were so wet. Come, Carey," he went on, looking white but determined. "Do shut up, we've got to get back to the bed."
"But Miss Price—" cried Carey wildly. "We can't leave Miss Price."
"We must," said Charles. "There's nothing we can do now. She would want us to be sensible."
Paul began to bellow loudly. He had no inhibitions. If Miss Price was dead, he was not going to be brave. Paul's noise had a steadying effect on Carey; she took his hand. "Quiet, Paul," she said, sniffing. "We can cry when we get home."
They could not walk quickly because Charles had burned his feet. Perhaps it was just as well; running might have aroused suspicion. Emelius seemed in a dream. He did not speak and gazed before him as if he still saw a black figure fluttering wildly on a broomstick. As they neared the gate leading into the field, the same fear descended on all of them. Suppose the bed had gone....
Carey and Paul had dropped a little behind, and it was Charles who entered the cowshed first. When Carey heard him exclaim, she deliberately stood still—waiting there in the squishy grass while the rain poured down. She felt she couldn't bear much more.
"Carey!" Charles was shouting. "Carey! Come and see!"
Carey dragged herself to the door of the cowshed. At first, in the gloom, she could see nothing. Then she distinguished the outline of the bed. A figure was lying on it—a figure propped up on one elbow—and a pair of angry eyes met her own in a stare of baleful accusation.
