Miss Hodge stared at him haughtily. “I have never used a spell in my life,” she said.
“A slight exaggeration,” Chrestomanci said. “You used one small spell, to make sure no one knew you were a witch.”
Why didn’t I think of that? Charles wondered, watching the look of fear and dismay grow in Miss Hodge’s face. He was very shaken. He could not get used to the idea that his second witch had probably been Brian’s mother.
Miss Hodge once more jiggled the telephone. It was still stuck. “Very well,” she said. “I’m not afraid of you. You can disable all the phones in the school if you like, but you won’t stop me going and telling everyone I meet about you and Mr. Wentworth and Brian, and the other four, unless Mr. Wentworth agrees to marry me this instant. I think I shall start with Harold Crossley.” She made as if to turn away and leave the room. It was clear she meant it.
Chrestomanci sighed and put one finger down on the schedule he was holding, very carefully and precisely, in the middle of one of the rectangles marked Miss Hodge 6B. And Miss Hodge was not there anymore. The telephone gave out a small ting, and she was gone. At the same moment, Nan, Estelle, Nirupam, and Charles all found themselves visible again. It was clear to them that Miss Hodge was not just invisible in their place. The room felt empty of her, and a small gust of wind ruffling the papers on Mr. Wentworth’s desk seemed to prove she was gone.
“Fancy her being a witch!” said Nirupam. “Where is she?”
Chrestomanci examined the schedule. “Er—next Tuesday, I believe. That should give us time to sort out this wretched situation. Unless we are very unlucky, of course.” He looked at Mr. Wentworth. “Perhaps you would be ready to help us do that now, sir?”
But Mr. Wentworth sank into the chair behind his desk and covered his face with his hands.
“You never told me Mum got away,” Brian said to him accusingly. “And you never said a word about Miss Cadwallader.”
“You never told me you intended to go and camp in the forest,” Mr. Wentworth said wearily. “Oh Lord! Where shall I get an extra teacher from? I’ve got to find someone to take Miss Hodge’s lessons this afternoon somehow.”
Chrestomanci sat in the chair he had put out for Miss Hodge. “It never ceases to amaze me,” he said, “the way people always manage to worry about the wrong things. My dear sir, do you realize that you, your son, and four of your pupils are all likely to be burned unless we do something? And here you are worrying about schedules.”
Mr. Wentworth lifted his harrowed face and stared past Chrestomanci. “How did she do it?” he said. “How does she keep it up? How can Miss Hodge be a teacher and not use witchcraft at all? I use it all the time. How else can I have eyes in the back of my head?”
“One of the great mysteries of our time,” Chrestomanci agreed. “Now please listen to me. You are aware, I believe, that there is at least one other world besides this one. It seems to be your custom to send escaped witches there. I presume your wife is there. What you may not realize is that these are only two out of a multitude of worlds, all very different from one another. I come from one of the other ones myself.”
To everyone’s relief, Mr. Wentworth listened to this. “Alternative worlds, you mean?” he said. “There’s been some speculation about that. If-worlds, counterfactuals, and so on. You mean they’re real?”
“As real as you are,” Chrestomanci said.
Nirupam was very interested in this. He doubled himself up on the floor beside Chrestomanci’s beautifully creased trousers and said, “They are made from the great events in history, I believe, sir, where it is possible for things to go two ways. It is easiest to understand with battles. Both sides cannot win a battle, so each war makes two possible worlds, with a different side winning. Like the Battle of Waterloo. In our world, Napoleon lost it, but another world at once split off from ours, in which Napoleon won the battle.”
“Exactly,” said Chrestomanci. “I find that world a rather trying one. Everyone speaks French there and winces at my accent. The only place they speak English there, oddly enough, is in India, where they are very British and eat treacle pudding after their curry.”
“I should like that,” Nirupam said.
“Everyone to his taste,” Chrestomanci said with a slight shudder. “But, as you will see, exactly who won the Battle of Waterloo made a great deal of difference between those two worlds. And that is the rule. A surprisingly small change always alters the new world almost out of recognition. Except in the case of this world of yours, where we all now are.” He looked at Mr. Wentworth. “This is what I need your help about, sir. There is something badly wrong with this world. The fact that witches are extremely common, and illegal, should have made as much difference here as it does in my own world, where witches are equally common, but quite legal. But it does not. Estelle, perhaps you can tell us about the world where the witches’ rescue service sends witches.”
Estelle beamed up at him adoringly from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. “The old lady said it was just like this one, only with no witchcraft,” she said.
“And that is just the trouble,” said Chrestomanci. “I know that world rather well, because I have a young ward who used to belong in it. And since I have been here, I have discovered that events in history here, cars, advertisements, goods in shops, money—everything I can check—are all exactly the same as those in my ward’s world. And this is quite wrong. No two worlds are ever this alike.”
Mr. Wentworth was attending quite keenly now. He frowned. “What do you think has gone wrong?” And Nan thought, So he was finding out symptoms!
Chrestomanci looked around them all, vaguely and dubiously, before he said, “If you’ll forgive me saying, your world should not exist.” They all stared. “I mean it,” Chrestomanci said, apologetically. “I have often wondered why there is so little witchcraft in my ward’s world. I see now that it is all in this one. Something—I don’t know what—has caused your world to separate from the other one, taking all the witchcraft with it. But instead of breaking off cleanly, it has somehow remained partly joined to the first world, so that it almost is that world. I think there has been some kind of accident. You shouldn’t get a civilized world where witches are burned. As I said, it ought not to exist. So, as I have been trying to explain to you all along, Mr. Wentworth, I urgently need a short history of witchcraft, in order to discover what kind of accident happened here. Was Elizabeth I a witch?”
Mr. Wentworth shook his head. “Nobody knows for sure. But witchcraft didn’t seem to be that much of a problem in her reign. Witches were mostly just old women in villages then. No—modern witchcraft really started soon after Elizabeth I died. There seems to have been a big increase in about 1606, when the first official bonfires started. The first Witchcraft Edict was passed in 1612. Oliver Cromwell passed more. There had been thirty-four Witchcraft Acts passed by 1760, the year Dulcinea Wilkes—”
But Chrestomanci held up one hand to stop him there. “Thank you. I know about the Archwitch. You’ve told me what I need to know. The present state of witchcraft began quite suddenly soon after 1600. That means that the accident we’re looking for must have happened around then. Have you any idea what it might be?”
Mr. Wentworth shook his head again, rather glumly. “I haven’t a notion. But—suppose you did know, what could you do about it?”
“One of two things,” said Chrestomanci. “Either we could break this world away completely from the other one, which I don’t consider a good idea, because then you would certainly all be burned—” Everybody shuddered, and Charles’s thumb found itself running back and forth over the blister on his finger. “Or,” said Chrestomanci, “and this is a much better idea, we could put your world back into the other one, where it really belongs.”
“What would happen to us if you did?” asked Charles.
“Nothing much. You would simply melt quietly into the people you really are in that world,” said Chrestomanci.
Everyone consider
ed this in silence for a moment. “Can that really be done?” Mr. Wentworth asked hopefully.
“Well,” said Chrestomanci, “it can, as long as we can find what caused the split in the first place. It will take strong magic. But it is Halloween and there ought to be a great deal of magic loose in this world particularly, and we can draw on that. Yes. I’m sure it can be done, though it may not be easy.”
“Then let’s do it,” said Mr. Wentworth. The idea seemed to restore him to his usual self. He stood up, and his eyes roved grimly across the riding clothes, the sky-blue shorts and Brian’s jeans, and rested incredulously upon the tattered pink balldress. “If you lot think you can appear in class like that,” he said. He was back to being a schoolmaster again.
“Er, leave Brian, I think,” Chrestomanci said quickly.
“You will have plenty of time to reconsider in detention,” Mr. Wentworth finished. Nan, Estelle, Charles, and Nirupam all scrambled hurriedly to their feet. And as soon as they were standing up, they found they were wearing school uniforms. They looked around for Brian, but he did not seem to be there.
“I’m invisible again!” Brian said disgustedly, out of the air.
Chrestomanci was smiling. “Not bad, sir,” he said to Mr. Wentworth. Mr. Wentworth looked pleased, and, as he shepherded the four of them to the door, he smiled back at Chrestomanci in quite a friendly way.
“Why is Brian allowed to stay invisible?” Estelle complained, as Mr. Wentworth marched them back toward the classroom.
“Because he gives Chrestomanci an excuse to go on staying here as an inquisitor,” Nirupam whispered. “He is supposed to be finding what the witch has done with Brian.”
“But don’t tell Brian,” Charles muttered, as they arrived outside the door of 6B. “He’d spoil it. He’s like that.” The truth was, he was not so sure he would not spoil things himself if he got the chance. Nothing had been changed. He was still in as much trouble as ever.
14
MR. WENTWORTH OPENED the door and ushered the four of them into the classroom, into a blast of stares and whispers. “I’m afraid I had to kidnap these four,” Mr. Wentworth said to Mr. Crossley, who happened to be teaching the rest. “We’ve been arranging my study for the inquisitor to use.”
Mr. Crossley seemed to believe this without question. 6B, to judge from their faces, felt it was an awful letdown. They had expected all four of them to have been arrested. But they made the best of it.
“Mr. Towers is looking for you two,” Simon whispered righteously to Nirupam and Charles. And Theresa said to Estelle, “Miss Phillips wants you.” Nan was lucky. Miss Phillips never remembered Nan if she could help it.
They had arrived back so late that there was only a short piece of lesson left before lunchtime. When the bell rang for lunch, Charles and Nirupam kept to the thickest crowds. Neither of them wanted Mr. Towers to see them. But Charles had his usual bad luck. Mr. Towers was on duty at the door of the dining hall. Charles was very relieved when he slipped past without Mr. Towers showing any interest in him at all.
Nirupam nudged Charles as they sat down after grace. Chrestomanci was sitting beside Miss Cadwallader at high table, looking bland and vague. Everyone craned to look at him. Word went around that this was the divisional inquisitor.
“I don’t fancy getting on the wrong side of him,” Dan Smith observed. “You can see that sleepy look’s just there to fool you.”
“He looks feeble,” said Simon. “I’m not going to let him scare me.”
Charles craned to look too. He knew what Simon meant, but he was quite sure by now that Chrestomanci’s vague look was as deceptive as Dan thought. Mr. Wentworth was up at high table too. Charles wondered where Brian was and how Brian would get any lunch.
Charles turned back to the table to hear Theresa saying, “He is so super looking, he makes me feel quite weak!”
To everyone’s surprise, Estelle jumped to her feet and leaned across the table, glaring at Theresa. “Theresa Mullett!” she said. “You just dare be in love with the inquisitor and see what you get! He’s mine. I met him first and I love him! So you just dare!”
Nobody said a word for a moment. Theresa was too astonished even to giggle. Everyone was so unused to seeing Estelle so fierce that even the monitor in charge could not think what to say.
During the silence, it became clear how Brian was going to get lunch. Charles and Nirupam felt themselves being pushed apart by an invisible body. Both of them were jabbed by invisible elbows as the body climbed onto the bench between them and sat. “You’ll have to let me eat off your plates,” whispered Brian’s voice. “I hope it’s not stew.”
Luckily, Simon broke the silence just as Brian spoke. He said, in a jeering, not-quite-believing way, “And what took you all so long to arrange for Mr. Feeble Inquisitor?”
From the way everyone looked then, Nan knew nobody had believed Mr. Wentworth’s excuse for an instant. She could see most of them suspected something like the truth. Help! thought Nan. “Well we had to put a lot of electric wiring into the study,” she invented hastily. “He has to have a bright light arranged to shine into people’s faces. It helps break them down.”
“Not for electric shocks at all?” Dan asked hopefully.
“Some of it may have been,” Nan admitted. “There were quite a lot of bare wires, and a sort of helmet thing with electrodes sticking out of it. Charles wired that. Charles is very good with electricity.”
“And what else?” Dan asked breathlessly. He was far too fascinated by now to notice he was talking to a girl.
“The walls were all draped in black,” invented Nan. “Estelle and I did that.”
Lunch was served just then. It was potato pie. This was fortunate for Brian, who dared not use a knife and fork, but not so lucky for Charles and Nirupam. Both of them gave grunts of indignation as a large curved chunk vanished from their plates. Brian had taken a handful from each. They were more annoyed still, when lumps of potato began to flop down between them.
“Don’t waste it!” snapped Nirupam.
“Can’t you tell where your mouth is?” Charles whispered angrily.
“Yes. But I don’t know where my hands are,” Brian whispered back. “You try, if you think you’re so clever!”
While they whispered, Nan was being eagerly questioned by Dan, and forced to invent more and more inquisitor’s equipment for Mr. Wentworth’s study. “Yes, there were these things with little chromium screws,” she was saying. “I think you’re right—those must have been thumbscrews. But some of them looked big enough to get an arm or a leg in. I don’t think he stops at thumbs.”
Nirupam dug Brian’s invisible side with his elbow. “Listen to this!” he whispered. “It all has to be there if he calls Dan in.”
“I’m not a fool,” Brian’s voice retorted with its mouth full.
“And of course there were a lot of other things we had to hang on the wall. All sizes of handcuffs,” Nan went on. She was inspired now and her invention seemed boundless. She just could not seem to stop. Charles began to wonder if one small study could possibly hold all the things she was describing—or even only the half of it that Brian managed to remember.
Fortunately, Estelle, who was far too busy watching Chrestomanci to eat, caused a sudden diversion by shouting out, “Look, look! Miss Cadwallader’s only using a fork, and he’s using a knife and a fork! Oh, isn’t he brave!”
At that, Nirupam seized the opportunity to try and shut Nan up. He gave her a sinister stare and said loudly, “You realize that the inquisitor will probably be questioning every one of us very searchingly indeed, after lunch is over.”
Though Nirupam meant this simply as a warning to Nan, it caused a worried silence. A surprising number of people did not seem very keen on the treacle tart which followed the potato pie. Nirupam seized that opportunity too. He took third and fourth helpings and shared them with Brian.
Straight after lunch, Mr. Wentworth came and marshaled the whole of 6B into alphabe
tical order. The worried silence became a scared one. From the looks they saw on faces of the rest of the school, the scare was catching. Even seniors looked alarmed as 6B were marched away. They marched upstairs and were lined up half in the passage and half on the stairs, while Mr. Wentworth went into his study to tell Chrestomanci they were ready. Those at the front of the line were able to see that the wavy glass in the door was now black as night.
Then it turned out that Chrestomanci wanted to see them in reverse alphabetical order. They all had to march up and down and around again, so that Heather Young and Ronald West were at the front of the line instead of Geoffrey Barnes and Deborah Clifton. They did it with none of the usual grumbling and scuffling. Even Charles, who was quite certain that they were only marching to give Chrestomanci time to put all Nan’s inventions in, found himself a little quiet and queasy, with his thumb rubbing at that blister. Heather and Ronald looked quite ill with terror. Dan Smith—who was third now that Brian was missing—asked Nirupam in an urgent whisper, “What’s he going to do with us?”
Nirupam had no more idea than Dan. He had not even known that Chrestomanci really was going to question them. He tried to look sinister. “You’ll see.” Dan’s face went cream-colored.
Chrestomanci did not see people for the same length of time. Heather disappeared into the study for what seemed an endless age, and she came out as frightened as she went in. Ronald was only in for a minute, and he came out from behind the darkened door looking relieved. He leaned across Dan and Nirupam to whisper to Simon, “No problem at all!”
“I knew there wouldn’t be,” Simon lied loftily.
“Quiet!” bellowed Mr. Wentworth. “Next—Daniel Smith.”
Dan Smith was not gone long either, but he did not come out looking as if there were no problem. His face was more like cheese than cream.
Nirupam was gone for much longer than either Nan or Charles had expected. When he came out, he was frowning and uneasy. He was followed by Simon. There was another endless wait. During it, the bell rang for afternoon lessons, and was followed by the usual surge of hurrying feet. The silence of lessons which came after that had gone on for so long before Simon came out that there was not a soul in 6B who did not feel like an outcast. Simon came out at last. He was an odd color. He would not speak to any of the friends who were leaning out of the line wanting to know what had happened. He just walked to the wall like a sleepwalker and leaned against it, staring into space.
Witch Week Page 17
