She lifted the basket and held it out to me.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘It’s for you, so that you can keep your promise.’
I accepted it but I wasn’t feeling very happy. Curious, I reached inside to lift the black cloth.
‘No, leave it be,’ Alice snapped, a sharp edge to her voice. ‘Don’t let the air get to them or they’ll spoil.’
‘What are they?’ I asked. It was growing darker by the minute and I was starting to feel nervous.
‘They’re just cakes.’
‘Thank you very much,’ I said.
‘They’re not for you,’ she said, a little smile playing at the corners of her mouth. ‘Those cakes are for Old Mother Malkin.’
My mouth became dry and a chill ran down my spine. Mother Malkin, the live witch the Spook kept in a pit in his garden.
‘I don’t think Mr Gregory would like it,’ I said. ‘He told me to keep away from her.’
‘He’s a very cruel man, Old Gregory,’ said Alice. ‘Poor Mother Malkin’s been in that damp, dark hole in the ground for almost thirteen years now. Is it right to treat an old woman so badly?’
I shrugged. I hadn’t been happy about it myself. It was hard to defend what he’d done, but he’d said there was a very good reason for it.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘you won’t get into trouble because Old Gregory need never know. It’s just comfort you’re bringing to her. Her favourite cakes made by family. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. Just something to keep up her strength against the cold. Gets right into her bones, it does.’
Once again I shrugged. All the best arguments seemed to belong to her.
‘So just give her a cake each night. Three cakes for three nights. Best do it at midnight because it’s then that she gets most peckish. Give her the first one tonight.’
Alice turned to go but stopped and turned to give me a smile. ‘We could become good friends, you and me,’ she said with a chuckle.
Then she disappeared into the deepening shadows.
Chapter Eight. Old Mother Malkin
Back at the Spook’s cottage, I began to worry, but the more I thought about it, the less clear I was in my own mind. I knew what the Spook would say. He’d throw the cakes away and give me a long lesson on witches and problems with girls wearing pointy shoes.
He wasn’t here so that didn’t enter into it. There were two things that made me go into the darkness of the eastern garden, where he kept the witches. The first was my promise to Alice.
‘Never make a promise that you’re not prepared to keep,’ my dad always told me. So I had little choice. He’d taught me right from wrong, and just because I was the Spook’s apprentice, it didn’t mean I’d to change all my ways.
Secondly, I didn’t hold with keeping an old woman as a prisoner in a hole in the ground. Doing that to a dead witch seemed reasonable, but not to a live one. I remember wondering what terrible crime she’d committed to deserve that.
What harm could it do just to give her three cakes? A bit of comfort from her family against the cold and damp, that’s all it was. The Spook had told me to trust my instincts, and after weighing things in the balance I felt that I was doing the right thing.
The only problem was that I had to take the cakes myself, at midnight. It gets pretty dark by then, especially if there’s no moon visible.
I approached the eastern garden carrying the basket. It was dark, but not quite as dark as I’d expected. For one thing, my eyes have always been pretty sharp at night. My mam’s always good in the dark and I think I get it from her side. And for another, it was a cloudless night and the moonlight helped me to pick out my way.
As I entered the trees, it suddenly grew colder and I shivered. By the time I reached the first grave, the one with the stone border and the thirteen bars, I felt even colder. That was where the first witch was buried. She was feeble, with little strength, or so the Spook had said. No need to worry there, I told myself, trying hard to believe it.
Making up my mind to give Mother Malkin the cakes in daylight was one thing, but now, down in the garden close to midnight, I was no longer so sure. The Spook had told me to keep well away after dark. He’d warned me more than once so it had to be an important rule and now I was breaking it.
There were all sorts of faint sounds. The rustlings and twitchings were probably nothing, just small creatures I’d disturbed moving out of my path, but they reminded me that I’d no right to be here.
The Spook had told me that the other two witches were about twenty paces further on, so I counted my steps out carefully. That brought me to a second grave which was just like the first one. I got closer, just to be sure. There were the bars and you could see the earth just beneath them, hard-packed soil without even a single blade of grass. This witch was dead but was still dangerous. She was the one who had been buried head downwards. That meant that the soles of her feet were somewhere just below the soil.
As I stared at the grave I thought I saw something move. It was a sort of twitch; probably just my imagination, or maybe some small animal – a mouse or a shrew or something. I moved on quickly. What if it had been a toe?
Three more paces brought me to the place I was looking for – there was no doubt about it. Again, there was a border of stones with thirteen bars. There were three differences though. Firstly, the area under the bars was a square rather than an oblong. Secondly, it was bigger, probably about four paces by four. Thirdly, there was no packed earth under the bars, just a very black hole in the ground.
I halted in my tracks and listened carefully. There hadn’t been much noise so far, just the faint rustlings of night creatures and a gentle breeze. A breeze so light that I’d hardly noticed it. I noticed it when it stopped though. Suddenly everything was very still and the wood became unnaturally quiet.
You see, I had been listening to try and hear the witch and now I sensed that she was listening to me.
The silence seemed to go on and on for ever, until suddenly I became aware of a faint breathing from the pit. That sound somehow made it possible to move, so I took a few more steps till I was standing very close to its edge, with the toe of my boot actually touching the stone border.
At that moment I remembered something the Spook had told me about Mother Malkin…
‘Most of her power’s bled away into the earth but she’d love to get her hands on a lad like you.’
So I took a step backwards – not too far, but the Spook’s words had set me thinking. What if a hand came out of the pit and grabbed my ankle?
Wanting to get it over with, I called down gently into the darkness. "Mother Malkin,’ I said. ‘I’ve brought something for you. It’s a present from your family. Are you there? Are you listening?’
There was no reply, but the rhythm of the breathing below seemed to quicken. So wasting no more time and desperate to get back to the warmth of the Spook’s house, I reached into the basket and felt under the cloth. My fingers closed upon one of the cakes. It felt sort of soft and squishy and a bit sticky. I pulled it out and held it over the bars.
‘It’s just a cake,’ I said softly. ‘I hope it makes you feel better. I’ll bring you another one tomorrow night.’
With those words, I let go of the cake and allowed it to fall into the darkness.
I should have gone back to the cottage immediately but I stayed for a few more seconds to listen. I don’t know what I expected to hear but it was a mistake.
There was a movement in the pit, as if something were dragging itself along the ground. And then I heard the witch begin to eat the cake.
I thought some of my brothers made unpleasant noises at the table but this was far worse. It sounded even more revolting than our big hairy pigs with their snouts in the swill bucket, a mixture of snuffling, snorting and chewing mixed with heavy breathing. I didn’t know whether or not she was enjoying the cake, but she certainly made enough noise about it.