“Looks to me as if he could do with a wash,” said a soft voice.
Chill with terror Margaret swung round. Lucy was standing in the doorway, her hands on her hips, her face more foreign than ever — elfish, almost — in the faint light of the lantern. She wasn’t looking at Margaret, but down at the wounded witch.
“Yeah,” he said with a rasping sigh, “water would be good.”
“But how are we going to get it here without anyone . . .” She stopped. In the panicky silence she could hear Tim gnawing a morsel of mutton out from a cranny of bone. She stood up, trying to seem (and feel) like a mistress talking to a servant.
“Lucy,” she said hotly, “if you tell anyone . . .”
But Lucy was smiling, and Margaret could think of no threats that would mean anything.
“It’s I could be menacing you, Miss Margaret, and not t’other way about. But I’ll help you for Tim’s sake. I mind him sitting by my bed when I had the measles, afore they took him away, just bubbling, but he made me feel better nor any of the medicines they gave me. He’d have been a doctor, Tim would, supposing he’d been in his right mind.”
“Doctor?”
“Leech, then, but a proper un. I’ll be fetching hot water. Fruit’s what he needs, miss, not that pappy bread.”
“What shall I do? Can I help?”
Lucy looked at her again — not her secret, half-mocking glance, but something new, considering, only a little suspicious.
“Aye,” she said at last, “mebbe you could. We’ll make as if we’re mucking out Tim’s shed, which I should a done weeks back. The Master’s in Low Pasture, and your aunt’s too fazed to notice what we do. So I’ll go and set the big kettle on the stove, and you could mebbe fork all that straw out of Tim’s shed and set light to it. Mind you don’t burn his treasures — you’ll find ’em under a bit of planking in the back corner.”
She slipped out, silent as a stoat. Margaret had to run and scramble over the tow-bars in the dark barn to call after her in a straining whisper, “I’ll come and help you with the kettle, Lucy.”
Lucy turned, black in the bright rectangular gap where the asbestos sheet had been, nodded in silence and flitted away.
There was a hayfork by the midden above the orchard. Margaret scrattled the straw in the shed together — it was cleaner than she’d thought, just musty with damp from the bare earth beneath; and really there were no more flies under the low roof than there were in any other shed on the farm. The plank in the corner she left where it was, after inquisitively lifting it to see what Tim’s “treasures” were: a broken orange Dinky-toy earth-shifter; a plastic water pistol; the shiny top of a soda siphon; a child’s watch which could never tell the time because the knob at the side only made the big and little hands move round the dial together. As she put the plank back Margaret was astonished that she should know what they all were —four days ago they would have been meaningless, except that she’d have known they were wicked.
She picked the driest straw she could see from her heap, twisted it together and took it back into the hut where the witch lay. Tim began to croak with alarm when she opened the lantern to poke it into the flame, so she carried the lantern out into the shed, lit her wisp of straw there and thrust it into the heap. After she’d put the lantern back she stood for several minutes leaning on her fork and watching the yellow stems shrivel into black threads which wriggled as the fire ate into the innards of the pile. Her cheeks were sharp with heat when she began to walk up through the orchard towards the house.
Lucy was in the kitchen, struggling to carry the steaming kettle single-handed. Aunt Anne sat on one side of the stove in an upright chair and Mr. Gordon sat in the rocking chair between the stove and the fire, rocking and clucking. Neither of them looked as though they would pay any more attention to the comings and goings of children than they did to the tortoiseshell butterfly which pattered against the windowpane.
“Can I help you with that, Lucy?” said Margaret.
“If you please, Miss Margaret,” said Lucy. “I thought I’d best clean out Tim’s shed afore winter sets in.”
Margaret picked up a cloth and gripped one handle of the kettle with it. But it wasn’t a kettle, she thought. A kettle was a small shiny thing with a cord going in at the back. You didn’t put it on the stove, but it got hot from inside because the cord was . . . was electric. This big pan they were edging out through the door, very carefully so that the hot water wouldn’t slop over, was a . . . a . . . preserving pan. She looked excitedly at Lucy’s down-bent face.
“I say, Lucy, I’ve just remembered . .
“Careful, Miss Margaret, or you’ll be spilling it all, and then we’ll have our work wasted.”
The interruption was soft and easy, but the glance from under the little lace cap was as fierce as a branding iron. Margaret suddenly saw what a comfortable time she’d had of it since the Changes — Scrub to break and ride and care for, a share of housework, only the occasional belting from Uncle Peter to be afraid of. Wary, of course, but never till now Lucy’s cowering softness, like the stillness of a mouse when a hawk crosses the sky above it. Not even Jonathan’s dangerous adventuring.
Those times were over, since they’d rescued the witch. She would have to cower and adventure with the others. This was what Jonathan had meant about being stuck.
They could never have cleaned the witch without Tim. At first, while Lucy dabbed at the spoiled face, bristly with beard between the scabs, he squatted beside the bedding and watched with the soft glance of a clever spaniel. But as soon as they tried to lift their patient and undress him Tim pushed gently between them and ran his arm under the limp shoulders, lifting the body this way and that while the girls eased the torn and blood-clotted rags off.
“We’d best be burning most of this too,” said Lucy. “D'you think you could find some old clothes of the Master's, Miss Margaret — nothing that he'll miss, mind?"
“I'll try," said Margaret. “Jo was right — he is wearing some kind of armor.”
“Yeah,” said the witch faintly. “Bulletproof, but not rockproof. I figure I got two or three busted ribs, and a busted arm, and I don't seem to move my legs like I used to. You some sort of resistance movement, huh?” “Resistance?” said Margaret.
“I guessed . . said the witch, and paused. “Oh, forget it, you’re only kids, anyway. Who knows I'm here?”
“Me and Jonathan and Lucy and Tim,'' said Margaret. “I heard you groaning under the stones and I told Jonathan and we got Tim to help us bring you down here. Uncle Peter would kill you if he knew, though.” “Us too, mebbe,” said Lucy, so softly that Margaret only just caught the words. Then she added in a brisker voice, “Which is your bad arm, mister?”
“Left. Roll me over on my right side and you can unzip my armor.”
They had to show Tim what they wanted, and he turned the witch over as gently as a shepherd handling a lamb. The man’s legs flopped uncontrolledly, not seeming to move properly with him, like a puppet’s. Then the zip puzzled them for a few seconds, but they both remembered in the same instant and reached out to pull the tag down.
“You'd best be looking for them clothes, Miss Margaret,” chided Lucy. “If we let him chill off, he’ll catch his death, surely.”
Margaret walked slowly up through the orchard, coming to terms with this new Lucy, not the slut who didn’t fill the lamps or rake out the ashes or scrub the step clean, but a different girl, a stranger, who knew just what needed doing. Rather than risk Mr. Gordon’s fierce and knowing glance she climbed the ivy and crawled in through Jonathan’s window — much easier by daylight than it had been in the dark. When she tiptoed out onto the landing she saw Jonathan crouched at the top of the stairs; he looked round at her and put his finger to his lips.