Mary Norton - Bed-Knob and Broomstick

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.

As the flying figure approached the stake, the remaining soldier fled to join the others, clutching his musket. The broomstick and the sweeping black cloak seemed almost to touch the burning fagots when the children saw a sword flash.

"It's her father's sword," exclaimed Charles excitedly. "She's going to cut him free." Carey was reminded, watching the awkward efforts to bring the broomstick within striking distance yet not too close, of a left-handed golfer trying to play polo.

"Oh, dear," she cried in an agony of fear. "She'll cut his head off." Emelius, aware at last, twisted and leaned and strained at his cords in terrified efforts to escape the deadly thrusts. A gust of spark-filled smoke blew against his face, and the children saw him coughing. Still the attack continued.

"Careful," she shouted. "Please, oh please, Miss Price!" Again there was a report, followed immediately by two others. The soldiers were firing. Carey, glancing fearfully at the bell-mouthed weapons, wondered how such guns could miss.

"They've got her," said Charles then, in his most reserved voice.

"No," cried Carey wildly, "no, they can't have!" Her eyes flew back to the stake, and she covered her mouth quickly to hold back a scream.

The broomstick was poised, motionless, shuddering, above the crackling wood. The sword dropped and stuck upright, quivering among the fagots. The broomstick wavered and sank downward toward the smoke and flame. Then, as they watched, painfully it seemed to pull itself free. It rose a little and made a limping, hesitating flight toward the head of a road leading out of the square. The soldiers turned slowly, keeping the fluttering object covered with their guns. Figures appeared in doorways. Several men, braver than the others, ventured into the street. All eyes were fixed on the black and tattered object that rose a little and then sank once more toward the ground, in painful hopping flight.

The children no longer watched the stake, where each second for Emelius became uncomfortably warmer; their eyes were fixed on the broomstick. They gripped each other in an agony of fear. Nothing seemed to matter in the world except Miss Price and her safety. As they watched, the broomstick rose a little. Jerkily swaying, rather drunkenly, as if it had lost its sense of direction, it made off down the street, at about the level of the first-floor windows.

Then a man threw a brick, and the soldiers fired again. The broomstick stopped in mid-air.

For about the twentieth part of a second the children saw the folds of the black cloak hang limp, before the whole equipage dropped like a stone. Then they could see it no more. People ran out of doorways, out of yards, out of alleys. Some were armed with staves, some with clubs; they saw one man, a butcher he must have been, with a large and shining chopper. All these people made for the spot where the broomstick had fallen. The narrow mouth of the street was choked with an ever increasing crowd, composed mostly of boys and men. No one glanced at the stake or felt the sudden onslaught of the rain. It poured down suddenly, a slanting rushing sheet of water, mingling with the tears on Carey's face and turning the churned dust into mud.

"Miss Price . . . Miss Price . . ." sobbed Carey, while the rain ran down her hair into the neck of her dressing gown. She hardly noticed Charles had left her side. She did not know how he had got there when she saw him clamber on the steaming fagots, which hissed and blackened under the downpour. She watched Charles seize the sword and chop at the ropes that bound Emelius. She saw Emelius fall forward on the piled wood, and the wood roll from under him. She saw Emelius hit the ground, and Charles climbing down from the stake, sword in hand. She saw Emelius picking himself up from the ground in a dazed way, his charred robe hanging in strips about his yellow-stockinged legs. She saw Charles urging him, talking to him, pulling him by the arm. Then Charles and Emelius were there beside her where she leaned with Paul against the cattle pen. Charles was pulling off Emelius's coat, so that he stood in shirt and breeches and wrinkled yellow stockings. . . .