Witch Week. Diana Wynne Jones

in a sort of trance of horror.

      But here was the smart red tracksuit of Mr Towers loping along beside him. “Charles, what are you doing running in walking shoes?”

      The fat witch vanished. Charles should have been glad, but he was not. His thinking had been interrupted, and he was not private any more.

      “I said why aren’t you wearing your spikes?” Mr Towers said.

      Charles slowed down a little while he wondered what to reply. Mr Towers trotted springily beside him, waiting for an answer. Because he was not thinking any more, Charles found his legs aching and his chest sore. That annoyed him. He was even more annoyed about his spikes. He knew Dan Smith had hidden them. That was why that group were laughing. Charles could see their faces craning over their shoulders as they ran, to see what he was telling Mr Towers. That annoyed him even more. Charles did not usually have this kind of trouble, the way Brian Wentworth did. His double-barrelled nasty look had kept him safe up to now, if lonely. But he foresaw he was going to have to think of something more than just looking in future. He felt very bitter.

      “I couldn’t find my spikes, sir.”

      “How hard did you look?”

      “Everywhere,” Charles said bitterly. Why don’t I say it was them? he wondered. And knew the answer. Life would not be worth living for the rest of term.

      “In my experience,” said Mr Towers, running and talking as easily as if he were sitting still, “when a lazy boy like you says everywhere, it means nowhere. Report to me in the locker room after school and find those spikes. You stay there until you find them. Right?”

      “Yes,” said Charles. Bitterly, he watched Mr Towers surge away from him and run up beside the next group to pester Nirupam Singh.

      He hunted for his spikes again during break. But it was hopeless. Dan had hidden them somewhere really cunning. At least, after break, Dan Smith had something else to laugh about beside Charles. Nan Pilgrim soon found out what. As Nan came into the classroom for lessons, she was greeted by Nirupam. “Hallo,” asked Nirupam. “Will you do your rope trick for me too?”

      Nan gave him a glare that was mostly astonishment and pushed past him without replying. How did he know about the ropes? she thought. The girls just never talked to the boys! How did he know?

      But next moment, Simon Silverson came up to Nan, barely able to stop laughing. “My dear Dulcinea!” he said. “What a charming name you have! Were you called after the Archwitch?” After that, he doubled up with laughter, and so did most of the people near.

      “Her name really is Dulcinea, you know,” Nirupam said to Charles.

      This was true. Nan’s face felt to her like a balloon on fire. Nothing else, she was sure, could be so large and so hot. Dulcinea Wilkes had been the most famous witch of all time. No one was supposed to know Nan’s name was Dulcinea. She could not think how it had leaked out. She tried to stalk loftily away to her desk, but she was caught by person after person, all laughingly calling out, “Hey, Dulcinea!” She did not manage to sit down until Mr Wentworth was already in the room.

      2Y usually attended during Mr Wentworth’s lessons. He was known to be absolutely merciless. Besides, he had a knack of being interesting, which made his lessons seem shorter than other teachers’. But today, no one could keep their mind on Mr Wentworth. Nan was trying not to cry.

      When, a year ago, Nan’s aunts had brought her to Larwood House, even softer, plumper and more timid than she was now, Miss Cadwallader had promised that no one should know her name was Dulcinea. Miss Cadwallader had promised! So how had someone found out? The rest of 2Y kept breaking into laughter and excited whispers. Could Nan Pilgrim be a witch? Fancy anyone being called Dulcinea! It was as bad as being called Guy Fawkes! Halfway through the lesson, Theresa Mullett was so overcome by the thought of Nan’s name that she was forced to bury her face in her knitting to laugh.

      Mr Wentworth promptly took the knitting away. He dumped the clean white bundle on the desk in front of him and inspected it dubiously. “What is it about this that seems so funny?” He unrolled the towel – at which Theresa gave a faint yell of dismay – and held up a very small fluffy thing with holes in it. “Just what is this?”

      Everyone laughed.

      “It’s a bootee!” Theresa said angrily.

      “Who for?” retorted Mr Wentworth.

      Everyone laughed again. But the laughter was short and guilty, because everyone knew Theresa was not to be laughed at.

      Mr Wentworth seemed unaware that he had performed a miracle and made everyone laugh at Theresa, instead of the other way round. He cut the laughter even shorter by telling Dan Smith to come out to the blackboard and show him two triangles that were alike. The lesson went on. Theresa kept muttering, “It’s not funny! It’s just not funny!” Every time she said it, her friends nodded sympathetically, while the rest of the class kept looking at Nan and bursting into muffled laughter.

      At the end of the lesson, Mr Wentworth uttered a few unpleasant remarks about mass punishments if people behaved like this again. Then, as he turned to leave, he said, “And by the way, if Charles Morgan, Nan Pilgrim and Nirupam Singh haven’t already looked at the main notice board, they should do so at once. They will find they are down for lunch on high table.”

      Both Nan and Charles knew then that this was not just a bad day – it was the worst day ever. Miss Cadwallader sat at high table with any important visitors to the school. It was her custom to choose three pupils from the school every day to sit there with her. This was so that everyone should learn proper table manners, and so that Miss Cadwallader should get to know her pupils. It was rightly considered a terrible ordeal. Neither Nan nor Charles had ever been chosen before. Scarcely able to believe it, they went to check with the notice board. Sure enough it read: Charles Morgan 2Y, Dulcinea Pilgrim 2Y, Nirupam Singh 2Y.

      Nan stared at it. So that was how everyone knew her name! Miss Cadwallader had forgotten. She had forgotten who Nan was and everything she had promised, and when she came to stick a pin in the register – or whatever she did to choose people for high table – she had simply written down the names that came under her pin.

      Nirupam was looking at the notice too. He had been chosen before, but he was no less gloomy than Charles or Nan.

      “You have to comb your hair and get your blazer clean,” he said. “And it really is true you have to eat with the same kind of knife or fork that Miss Cadwallader does. You have to watch and see what she uses all the time.”

      Nan stood there, letting other people looking at the notices push her about. She was terrified. She suddenly knew she was going to behave very badly on high table. She was going to drop her dinner, or scream, or maybe take all her clothes off and dance among the plates. And she was terrified, because she knew she was not going to be able to stop herself.

      She was still terrified when she arrived at high table with Charles and Nirupam. They had all combed their heads sore and tried to clean from the fronts of their blazers the dirt which always mysteriously arrives on the fronts of blazers, but they all felt grubby and small beside the stately company at high table. There were a number of teachers, and the Bursar, and an important-looking man called Lord Something-or-other, and tall, stringy Miss Cadwallader herself.

      Miss Cadwallader smiled at them graciously and pointed to three empty chairs at her left side. All of them instantly dived for the chair furthest away from Miss Cadwallader. Nan, much to her surprise, won it, and Charles won the chair in the middle, leaving Nirupam to sit beside Miss Cadwallader.

      “Now we know that won’t do, don’t we?” said Miss Cadwallader. “We always sit with a gentleman on either side of a lady, don’t we? Dulcimer must sit in the middle, and I’ll have the gentleman I haven’t yet met nearest me. Clive Morgan, isn’t it? That’s right.”

      Sullenly, Charles and Nan changed their places. They stood there, while Miss Cadwallader was saying grace, looking