by Mary Stewart
'That's it,' said Mr Flanagan. 'That's the College, and one of the best of its kind. And now, if you've finished your lunch, you'd better be getting along. You don't want to be late for classes on your first day, do you now?'
'But I don't want–' Mary was interrupted by the sound of a bell, which came from somewhere inside the building.
'Hurry up!' cried Mr Flanagan, jumping off the mounting-block, and pulling her down after him. 'That's the first bell. It's three minutes you've got now, and they'll be looking for you.'
He took her by the arm and urged her towards the archway.
'But I'd much rather stay here and talk to you!' cried Mary, hanging back. 'I don't have to go in, do I? There's been some mistake–they're not really expecting me at all.'
'Sure and they are. Everybody knows you're here. Didn't you hear the alarm-cock?' As he hurried her forward, Mr Flanagan nodded to the bright weathercock overhead. 'And it whirling round on its stick like it would be taking off for the moon or the gardens of Jerusalem? Come along now, me dear, don't be nervous. Your little cat's there already.'
And Mary saw that this, indeed, was true. Tib was ahead of them, trotting out of the archway into the sunlight of the park. He stopped and looked back. He looked alert and eager, as if this (thought poor Mary) was what he had been all along expecting to do.
'And that reminds me,' said Mr Flanagan at her elbow, 'and don't be overlooking this, me dear. It's very strict they are, very strict indeed.' And he pointed to another small but forbidding notice which was fastened to the outer wall of the archway.
It said: 'Familiars not allowed in the park except on leash.'
Mr Flanagan bobbed down like a diving duck and came up with an indignant Tib. 'Have ye got a lead?'
'No, I haven't. And besides, that's not a familiar, that's Tib.'
'Not a familiar? Black as he is, and with the eyes on him like emeralds? You'll be telling me next you're not a witch, and fine we both know that you'd never have got that broomstick this far, and you with no lessons either, unless you knew the words. Quick, now, there's the other bell. Tie some string on him, and get away in. Hurry!'
His haste was so catching, and her own bewilderment so great, that almost without thinking Mary put her hand in her coat pocket, and brought out a length of old Zebedee's raffia. On this Mr Flanagan pounced with a sound of satisfaction, and, before she knew exactly what was happening, Mary found herself walking across a wide gravel sweep towards the great door of the house with one end of the raffia clutched tightly in her hand, and Tib–rather offended and very dignified–stalking ahead of her with the other end loosely tied round his neck. The air was very still, and very quiet. Not a single bird, not one, was singing in the trees.
And now they were at the foot of the wide flight of steps that led up to the front door. There were griffins here, too. They sat on their stone pedestals, one at each side of the steps. On the right-hand pedestal Mary saw yet another notice. It said, simply:
TRESPASSERS
WILL BE
TRANSFORMED
Mary stared, stopped dead, then turned quickly to look behind her.
Mr Flanagan was nowhere to be seen. And as he went back to his stable yard, he had shut the gate behind him. The archway was barred by a solid slab of studded oak.
Then the front door of the College opened, and a tall woman in black came out on to the head of the steps. She beckoned to Mary.
Mary looked at Tib. Tib looked back with no expression whatever in his green, green eyes.
The woman beckoned again.
Mary walked up the steps towards her.
CHAPTER SIX
Will You Walk Into My Parlour?
The woman on the steps was tall and handsome. She had black hair, wound into a big bun on the nape of her neck, and the skirt of her long black dress swept the ground. And she wore diamonds. Lots of diamonds. Rings, pendants, brooches, and earrings as big as dog-daisies.
Mary thought that she must be a queen, or at least a duchess, but it seemed as if Mr Flanagan and the notices had told the truth, for the woman smiled pleasantly down at Mary, and said: 'I am the Headmistress, Madam Mumblechook. You may call me Madam.'
'Thank you,' said Mary politely, holding on tightly to Tib's leash.
'Welcome,' said Madam Mumblechook in a deep carrying voice, 'to Endor College.'
'Thank you,' said Mary again, 'but I'm not quite…'
'You are, of course,' said the Headmistress, with a piercing look, 'a new pupil? When I saw you approach with your familiar–' she waved at Tib '–I realised at once that you were to be one of us. Not,' she added thoughtfully, 'a Trespasser?'
It was, Mary remembered, rather dangerous hereabouts to be a Trespasser. One was Transformed. And she had no intention whatever of being Transformed.
She said firmly, 'I'm a new pupil, Madam, thank you.'
'Excellent, excellent. I'm sure you'll do well, and be very happy with us.'
The Headmistress turned and led the way into the building. There was a wide entrance hall, and to the left of this a door stood open on what was apparently an office. Mary could see a big desk, a shelf for books, and filing cabinets against the wall. On the door was painted, in black, the word headmistress.
It was comfortingly normal.
Madam Mumblechook paused by the office door.
'Let me see now, are you boarding with us, or studying as a day pupil?'
'A day pupil, please,' said Mary quickly.
'Ah, just so. Well, we must decide which grade to start you in, then you can be duly enrolled. What is your name, my dear?'
'Mary Smith.'
Madam Mumblechook looked at her thoughtfully. 'Yes, of course. It always is. You are the sixty-third, I think. Or is it sixty-fourth?'
'Sixty-fourth what?' asked Mary, startled.
'The sixty-fourth Mary Smith,' said Madam Mumblechook. 'Most witches like to study under an alias, and they like to choose the best name for it. Of course if we ever got anyone who really was called Mary Smith …But never mind that now. Come and see the classrooms, and then we can discuss which courses to enrol you for.'
From the rear of the hallway two corridors led off to left and right. Madam Mumblechook turned to the right. 'The other way leads to the boarders' wing,' she said, and Mary remembered the low, new-looking buildings she had glimpsed from the air. 'The classrooms and laboratories are down this way. Come, Miss–er–Smith.'
'But my name really is Mary Smith!' cried Mary, hurrying after her down a long corridor swimming in dim-green shadow. The Headmistress did not seem to have heard her. She was opening the door into what appeared to be a classroom.
But it was not like any classroom that Mary had ever seen or even imagined. For one thing, it was dark–so dark that at first Mary could hardly make out the faces of the pupils who sat in the desks below the teacher's dais. Also it was small; there were only seven pupils. The light–what there was of it–came from a single candle, which burned with a bright green flame, and made the face of the teacher, who leaned over it, look very peculiar indeed.
The teacher was an old man who appeared–such was the curious light–to have green eyes, green hair and beard, and green skin. He looked very much as Mary had always imagined a merman would look, only older, greener, and–it must be admitted–much less wholesome, like something going mouldy. He sat tapping a long, clawed finger on the table in front of him, keeping time to the chanting of the pupils in those dimly seen desks.
At first it sounded like children chanting nursery rhymes, or even their tables, as Mary knew they had done in infant schools many years ago, when her grandmother was a girl. In keeping with the candlelight, Mary thought, and Madam's long black dress and old-fashioned hairdo. But then she saw that the pupils were not children at all.
Dimly, by the queer candlelight, she saw them, disembodied faces swimming green in the shadows; two old ladies, an elderly man with a round, dimpled face, three more ladies rather younger, and a seventh pupil wh
om she took at first glance to be a child, till she saw he was a dwarf, and quite middle-aged at that. And they were all chanting, not the ordinary nursery rhymes that Mary knew, but strange ones which went wrong here and there. It was as if the rhyme started out properly and then slipped somehow, so that the result was not ordinary, or even nice at all.
Take a crooked sixpence,
Crawl a crooked mile,
Lay it in the moonlight
On a crooked stile;
Get a crooked cat
To catch a crooked mouse,
And lock 'em up for ever
In a little crooked house.
It must, Mary realised, be a spell or charm–but what kind of magic could this be for? Nothing, surely, to do with the flying broomstick and Tib, and the beautiful fly-by-night flower?
One two three four
Mary's at the College door;
Five six seven eight
Let her in and it's too late…
The chanting wavered and died away as she and Madam Mumblechook stood in the doorway. Eight pairs of eyes–all apparently green–were fixed on her. She felt a little frightened, but then a soft touch on her leg made her remember Tib, and she bent 54
Will you walk into my parlour?
quickly to caress his fur. It was ruffled, as if he were excited or apprehensive too; but it was silky and real and comforting.
'This,' said Madam, 'is the first grade Arts class.
Spells of the simpler kind. Turning milk sour, blighting turnips, making the cows go dry. In the second term we progress further to such things as cramps, aches, and agues. The third term is devoted to revision and field work, and the examinations are in December.'
She paused. 'And the College has its recreations too. Midnight picnics–though these are usually only for the boarders; and of course flying lessons. The aerial gymkhana is in the summer term. And that reminds me, my dear–there is no need to fly in past the stable yard; it upsets the alarm-cock. You may have noticed our private landing strip on the north turret.'
'I believe I did,' said Mary.
'Then come in that way, next time. Of course all our pupils, day pupils and all, are expected to attend our annual congress in the Harz Mountains on April 30th.'
Mary did not quite know what to say, but the Headmistress did not wait for an answer. She signed to the old man on the dais and the chanting began again:
Ding Dong Bell,
Pussy's in the well;
She wouldn't have gone right in
But oh, but oh, she's terrible, terrible thin…
Mary bent down quickly and touched Tib again, then raised her voice across the chanting: 'You said something about laboratories, Madam. Do you have science courses?'
'Yes, indeed. We hold Advanced Study courses under one of the most distinguished of wizards, Doctor Dee. You will have heard of him. But have you reached science studies yet? You look very young.'
'My father is a scientist,' said Mary. 'A professor.'
Madam raised her brows. 'Indeed? Where, may I ask?'
'Cambridge.' Mary had to shout to make herself heard through a very noisy spell about warts.
One, two, spotty ma coo,
Three, four, slick as a doo;
Warty, warty, jiminy jane,
Up the chimbley and back again…
Now Madam looked definitely impressed. She led the way out of the classroom, and the door closed on the chanting. 'Gormbridge? Then he must be a warlock of the very highest order. No wonder you are advanced for your age, Miss Smith. He has taught you himself?'
'Well,' said Mary, 'not really, except that he taught me to read before I went to school. And of course I knew all those rhymes when I was very little–only they weren't quite the same.'
'A different version? How very interesting. These regional variations can be most instructive. We must collate, my dear Miss Smith, we must collate. And your mother? No doubt she, too, is accomplished?'
'Oh, yes. She was at Cambridge, too. She was one of Daddy's students.'
'Really! So there is talent on both sides! Indeed we shall be happy to welcome you to Endor. A most promising recruit. Where are your parents now?'
'They're abroad, so they sent me to stay in the country for a while.'
'And they sent you to me. I am flattered, very flattered indeed. Of course we shall enrol you immediately. You must begin classes today. What grade were you in at Gormbridge?'
'The third form.'
'The third! Then no doubt you have already studied some of the more difficult spells. You will already be well beyond our first grade.'
'Blighting turnips and things? We don't use spells for that kind of thing now,' said Mary, who was beginning to enjoy herself. 'We use sprays.'
'Methods change, methods change,' said Madam, 'but basically magic remains the same. One can do a tremendous amount of damage in a very short time, if one gets the ingredients right. Have you studied invisibility yet?'
'No,' said Mary, 'but I should like to, very much.'
This was true. It seemed that she was going to keep her end up well enough with the Headmistress, so she might as well enjoy the adventure, and bluff the day through, and no doubt at the end of it would get the little broomstick to carry her home again.
But, she thought, remembering the weird green candle, and the moist eyes of the chanting pupils, and the nasty little songs they sang, she would never come back. Never. It might be exciting, and interesting, and quite harmless, but–she realised suddenly–she would rather be back at Red Manor, all alone, sweeping up the leaves on the autumn lawn.
Madam Mumblechook opened another classroom door.
'Second grade. The invisibility class,' she announced.
This classroom was quite different, and looked much more normal. It was big, and had enormous windows through which the sunlight blazed. There was a dais with a long table for the teacher, and behind this a blackboard–a red blackboard, with writing on it in yellow chalk. And there were rows of desks in front, about thirty all told. The room was deserted.
Mary was just about to ask where everyone was, when Madam Mumblechook said with obvious satisfaction,
'Ah, I see the class is going very well. A hundred per cent. Very satisfactory. A good formula, obviously. Would you care to try it, Miss Smith?'
She pointed to the writing on the blackboard. This was spidery and not very easy to read, being written from corner to corner of the blackboard, instead of straight across. It was, moreover, in a foreign language.
Mary's new-found confidence ebbed abruptly. 'I–I'm not sure that I would, at the moment, thank you,' she said. Again she was just about to ask where the class was, when something began to happen that was stranger than anything she had yet seen.
Right in front of her, where there had been nothing but the empty dais and behind it the red blackboard–redboard, surely, thought Mary–someone seemed to be standing. A shadow only at first, a sort of ghostly outline of a person in front of the sunshine.
There was no colour, only shape, and a sort of shimmer of personality, which slowly gathered substance till it became a smile on the face of a pleasant-looking man. Then all at once he was fully there, standing on the dais with one hand resting on a book which lay open on the table. In his other hand was a thin white stick, which Mary realised must be a wand. From time to time it hissed faintly, and green sparks spurted or dripped from its tip like drops from a leaking tap.
'Doctor Dee,' said the Headmistress, 'this is Miss Mary Smith. She is to enrol with us, and I feel sure that she will become one of our most able scholars. She is already adept at many of the elementary branches of magic. Her parents both studied–both of them, Doctor Dee–at Gormbridge.'
'What a splendid start!' said Doctor Dee, his eyes twinkling at Mary. 'And what a splendid name. How do you do, Miss Mary Smith?'
'How do you do?' said Mary. 'Actually, you know,' she added, 'it isn't Gormbridge; it's Cambridge.'
'These local differences of pro
nunciation…' Madam, scanning the empty classroom, was hardly attending. 'So interesting. Ah! Doctor Dee!'
The Doctor, following her gaze, started, stared, and then cried out, 'You, and you …and you, Grizel–keep your mind on your work! Concentrate! I distinctly saw you, all three of you!'
The classroom shone in the sunlight, bright and swept and empty, but Mary thought that, just as he spoke, she had seen, faintly shimmering at three of the desks in the back row, the seated figures of girls–women?–dressed in long loose robes like dressing-gowns, and each holding in her cupped hands what looked like a ball of glass. Then they were gone into the empty sunlight.
'Can you read it?' asked Doctor Dee. He pointed at the formula on the redboard with his wand. The green sparks fizzed, and the yellow words danced up and down like gnats in sunlight. 'Oh dear, oh dear, I forgot to turn the power off. There, that's better, they're steady now. I know my writing is not always clear, but I hope that perhaps you can make it out. It's one of my own spells,' he added, wistfully, 'and some of my pupils find it much simpler than the classical ones.'
'It's very clear,' said Mary, not quite truthfully, but wanting to be polite.
'Really? Really?' He looked delighted. 'I know it isn't so foolproof as, say, the old Merlin formula or Professor Faust's; but one must move with the times, and some of the new fabrics proved resistant to the old formulae. You can shift velvet with almost anything, but the poly-amino synthetics and some of the acetate derivatives are the very angel to disintegrate.'
'I'm wearing a lot of nylon myself,' said Mary.
Rashly, as it happened. Doctor Dee beamed. 'Really? Then by all means let us try immediately! Here, hold this. I haven't a spare globe, but this will do.' He handed her a big glass ink-well that had been standing on the table. It was three-quarters full of ink. She hesitated, but Madam was nodding and smiling, and Doctor Dee's eyes shone with enthusiasm.
