Bed-Knob and Broomstick (15 page)

   
The stake ... it was years since they had burned anyone at the stake. Witches
and sorcerers were hanged nowadays, not burned. It was barbarous, monstrous,
to burn a man alive! But the people were obsessed today by fire, fire, fire.
. . .

   
"Oh," cried Emelius, putting his hands on his closed eyelids. "The
stake . . . the stake . . . save me from the stake!"
He sat quiet, his face hidden in his hands, as though, if he were still enough,
he might find that, after all, he had died there in the horsepond and it was
all over. "Here I am," he thought bitterly, "condemned for witchcraft,
and I never knew a spell that worked."
If it had been Miss Price-that would have been faker; she was a witch, a real
one, but no one would dare burn her. No one would pull Miss Price out of her
tidy little house and drag her down the High Street to the village green. If
she paid her taxes, observed the English Sunday, and worked for the Red Cross,
no one bothered what she did with the rest of her time. She could create a black
cat as big as an elephant, and no one would molest her as long as she kept it
off other people's property and did not ill-treat it.

   
"Oh, Miss Price, if you knew-" groaned Emelius, his eyes hidden, "if
you knew that I am to be burned at the stake!"
"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 leapt, 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 furred-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 knuckle bones, and a great dark wig moved heavily
on his shoulders. As they came abreast of him, they smelt 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 hoofs 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 smelt 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 downwards, 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, ear-splitting 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 upwards 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 upwards 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
burnt 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.