Eva Ibbotson - Not Just a Witch

‘I could make one or two leopards for you; I’m sure to meet one or two really wicked people before we get married. But a whole hillside — I don’t see how I could possibly do that. How many do you want?’

‘Three hundred!’ said Mr Knacksap firmly. ‘At least.’

Heckie leapt to her feet. ‘Three hundred! My dearest Li-Li, that’s quite impossible. There probably aren’t three hundred wicked people in Britain, let alone Wellbridge!’

‘Yes, there are, my treasure. There are three hundred wicked people right here in this town. Very wicked people. Murderers and terrorists and embezzlers and thugs. People who shouldn’t be eating their heads off at the government’s expense. People who’d be much happier roaming the hills as free and graceful leopards for me to look at when I ate my kippers.’

‘But where?’ asked Heckie. ‘What do you mean?’

‘In the prison, of course. In Wellbridge prison not a mile from here.’

He leant back, well pleased with himself, and waited for Heckie to tell him how clever he was.

‘You mean you want me to turn all the prisoners into leopards?’ asked Heckie, looking stunned.

‘I do,’ said the furrier smugly.

The witch shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Li-Li, but I can’t do that.’

Mr Knacksap was absolutely furious. How dare she go against his wishes? ‘Can’t! What do you mean, you can’t?’ he said, and turned away so that she wouldn’t see him grinding his teeth.

Heckie sighed. ‘You see, people get sent to prison for all sorts of things. There’s no way I could be sure that all of them are wicked. If someone had bopped his mother-in-law with a meat cleaver, he mightn’t be really bad. It would depend—’

‘Everybody in Wellbridge jail is bad,’ hissed the furrier. ‘It’s a high security prison. That means that anyone who gets out will certainly strike again. And anyway, I’d have thought you’d want to make your Li-Li happy. I’d have thought—’

‘I do want to make you happy,’ said Heckie. ‘I want to terribly . But one has to do what is right and changing people who are not wicked is Not Right.’

It was at this moment that the doorbell rang and Daniel and Joe came in, carefully carrying a large, round box covered in brown paper.

‘We took this from the delivery boy,’ said Joe. ‘It’s addressed to both of you. I expect it’s a wedding present.’

He handed the box to the furrier who took it and simpered. If people were sending silver or valuable glass, he’d have to be sure of getting it to his place so that he could sell it before he bolted for Spain.

‘But where’s the dragworm?’ asked Heckie, looking at Daniel. ‘I thought you were taking him out.’

‘I was,’ said Daniel. ‘But I met Sumi and she wanted to take him for a bit.’

Heckie nodded and smiled at Mr Knacksap who was eagerly undoing the parcel. Perhaps it was a soup tureen, thought the furrier — that could fetch a couple of hundred. Or an antique clock… But as he tore off the wrappings, his look of greed turned to one of puzzlement. For there seemed to be holes in the cardboard box and surely neither soup tureens nor clocks needed to breathe?

‘Ugh! It’s a monster! A horrible diseased THING full of boils. Get rid of it! Get it out! Shoo!’

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…