Not Just a Witch

The boys stood very still and looked at Heckie. Now at last she would see! It had been very hard to bring Heckie’s familiar into the room, knowing what would happen to him, but the children would have done anything to save the witch.

‘It’s the dragworm, Heckie,’ said Daniel quietly.

Too late, Mr Knacksap realized his mistake. He began to cough and splutter and totter round the room. ‘Oh, help! My asthma! I’m choking! I can’t breathe!’

But for once, Heckie didn’t rush to the furrier’s side. She had gathered up the dragworm, so shocked by what she saw that at first she couldn’t speak.

Her familiar had been in a bad way when he was close to Mrs Winneypeg, but it was nothing to the state he was in now. The hair on his topknot wasn’t just white, it was as brittle as that of a ninety-year-old. Some of his scales had actually flaked off, his eyes were filmed over. As for his other end – the most hardened sick nurse would have shed tears when she saw the dragworm’s tail.

‘Oh, you poor, poor love; you poor thing!’ cried Heckie – and as she stroked his head, there came from his throat that ghostly, faint, heartbreaking: ‘Quack!’

‘I don’t understand it,’ said Heckie. ‘What has happened? What made him come on like that?’

It was Joe who spoke. ‘He did. Mr Knacksap did. That’s why we brought the dragworm, so that you could see what kind of a person—’

‘Stop it! That’s enough!’ Heckie’s pop eyes snapped with temper. ‘How dare you speak like that about the man I’m going to marry?’

But she looked at Mr Knacksap in a very puzzled way.

The furrier, though, had recovered himself. Still pretending to cough and wheeze, he drew himself up to his full height and pointed at the boys.

‘You lying, evil children! How dare you tell poor Heckie such untruths? As though I didn’t see you. I saw you quite distinctly taking this poor, sensitive creature right up to the prison gate and along the prison walls. Quite distinctly, I saw you, and I thought then how foolish it was to risk him like that.’

‘We didn’t!’ said Daniel and Joe together. ‘Honestly we didn’t! We wouldn’t do a silly thing like that.’

‘In the tartan shopping basket,’ Mr Knacksap went on. ‘I saw you not half an hour ago.’ He turned to Heckie. ‘Now will you believe me? Now will you believe me when I tell you how evil those prisoners are?’

Heckie looked desperately from the furrier to the boys and back again. She was a sensible witch, but no one can be in love and stay sensible for long.

‘Oh, Daniel . . . Joe . . . that was foolish of you. Run along now and I’ll put him in the bath. He’ll soon be better.’

So the children left, wretched and defeated, having made the dragworm ill for nothing. And that night, Heckie phoned the furrier.

‘All right, Lionel,’ she said wearily. ‘I’ll do what you ask. You shall have your leopards.’

To the stone witch, Mr Knacksap didn’t say anything about snow leopards. What he spoke to Dora about was his Cousin Alfred.

‘What’s happened to my poor dear cousin is the one thing that is spoiling my happiness,’ he said, dabbing his eyes with his handkerchief.

‘What has happened to him?’ asked Dora Mayberry.

‘He is in prison,’ said Mr Knacksap, and sighed. ‘Here in Wellbridge. That sweet, sensitive soul eating his heart out among all those ruffians.’

‘Oh, Lewis, that’s so sad. How did it happen?’

‘It wasn’t Alfred’s fault, I promise you. He was led astray by bad people. If only you could have seen him as a little boy. We were such friends. He used to build sandcastles for me, and whenever his mummy bought him a lollipop, he would let me have a lick. Look at his photograph – isn’t that an innocent face?’

Dora took the picture and said, yes it was, and fancy him having ringlets! (The picture was actually of a child actor who had played Little Lord Fauntleroy in a film.)

‘What is he in prison for?’ she asked.

‘He stole the purse out of an old lady’s handbag. The wicked people he fell in with made him do it.’ He dabbed at his eyes again and sniffed. ‘If only I could get him out of prison, I would send him to a wonderful mind doctor that I know of. Then he’d soon be well again and never do anything bad any more.’

‘But how could you, Lewis? How could you get him out?’

This time, Mr Knacksap did go down on his knees. After all, soon he would be able to buy dozens of pairs of new trousers, hundreds of them . . .

‘With you to help me, dearest Dora, I could do it. If you could turn the prison guards to stone, just for one night, I could get him out.’

Dora thought for a while and then she said that if it was only his Cousin Alfred he was going to get out, and if she could turn the guards back into people the next day, she didn’t mind. ‘I couldn’t leave them stone, of course, because they aren’t wicked. Not so far as I know. But for a night it shouldn’t hurt.’

‘Oh, my dearest, dearest Dora,’ said Mr Knacksap, ‘you’ve made me so happy! I just couldn’t face sitting over my porridge and kippers in Paradise Cottage, knowing that poor dear Alfred was lying in a cold stone cell.’