“Ah,” said Bod. Then, suspicion forming, tentatively, he said, “They say a witch is buried here.”
She nodded. “Drownded and burnded and buried here without as much as a stone to mark the spot.”
“You were drowned and burned?”
She settled down on the hill of grass cuttings beside him, and held his throbbing leg with her chilly hands. “They come to my little cottage at dawn, before I’m proper awake, and drags me out onto the green. ‘You’re a witch!’ they shouts, fat and fresh-scrubbed all pink in the morning, like so many pigwiggins scrubbed clean for market day. One by one they gets up beneath the sky and tells of milk gone sour and horses gone lame, and finally Mistress Jemima gets up, the fattest, pinkest, best scrubbed of them all, and tells how as Solomon Porritt now cuts her dead and instead hangs around the washhouse like a wasp about a honeypot, and it’s all my magic, says she, that made him so and the poor young man must be bespelled. So they strap me to the cucking stool and forces it under the water of the duck pond, saying if I’m a witch I’ll neither drown nor care, but if I am not a witch I’ll feel it. And Mistress Jemima’s father gives them each a silver groat to hold the stool down under the foul green water for a long time, to see if I’d choke on it.”
“And did you?”
“Oh yes. Got a lungful of water. It done for me.”
“Oh,” said Bod. “Then you weren’t a witch after all.”
The girl fixed him with her beady ghost eyes and smiled a lopsided smile. She still looked like a goblin, but now she looked like a pretty goblin, and Bod didn’t think she would have needed magic to attract Solomon Porritt, not with a smile like that. “What nonsense. Of course I was a witch. They learned that when they untied me from the cucking stool and stretched me on the green, nine parts dead and all covered with duckweed and stinking pond muck. I rolled my eyes back in my head, and I cursed each and every one of them there on the village green that morning, that none of them would ever rest easily in a grave. I was surprised at how easily it came, the cursing. Like dancing it was, when your feet pick up the steps of a new measure your ears have never heard and your head don’t know, and they dance it till dawn.” She stood, and twirled, and kicked, and her bare feet flashed in the moonlight. “That was how I cursed them, with my last gurgling pond-watery breath. And then I expired. They burned my body on the green until I was nothing but blackened charcoal, and they popped me in a hole in the potter’s field without so much as a headstone to mark my name,” and it was only then that she paused, and seemed, for a moment, wistful.
“Are any of them buried in the graveyard, then?” asked Bod.
“Not a one,” said the girl, with a twinkle. “The Saturday after they drownded and toasted me, a carpet was delivered to Master Porringer, all the way from London Town, and it was a fine carpet. But it turned out there was more in that carpet than strong wool and good weaving, for it carried the plague in its pattern, and by Monday five of them were coughing blood, and their skins were gone as black as mine when they hauled me from the fire. A week later and it had taken most of the village, and they threw the bodies all promiscuous in a plague pit they dug outside of the town, that they filled in after.”
“Was everyone in the village killed?”
She shrugged. “Everyone who watched me get drownded and burned. How’s your leg now?”
“Better,” he said. “Thanks.”
Bod stood up slowly, and limped down from the grass pile. He leaned against the iron railings. “So were you always a witch?” he asked. “I mean, before you cursed them all?”
“As if it would take witchcraft,” she said with a sniff, “to get Solomon Porritt mooning ’round my cottage.”
Which, Bod thought, but did not say, was not actually an answer to the question, not at all.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Got no headstone,” she said, turning down the corners of her mouth. “Might be anybody. Mightn’t I?”
“But you must have a name.”
“Liza Hempstock, if you please,” she said tartly. Then she said, “It’s not that much to ask, is it? Something to mark my grave. I’m just down there, see? With nothing but nettles to show where I rest.” And she looked so sad, just for a moment, that Bod wanted to hug her. And then it came to him, and as he squeezed between the railings of the fence. He would find Liza Hempstock a headstone, with her name upon it. He would make her smile.
He turned to wave good-bye as he began to clamber up the hill, but she was already gone.
There were broken lumps of other people’s stones and statues in the graveyard, but, Bod knew, that would have been entirely the wrong sort of thing to bring to the gray-eyed witch in the potter’s field. It was going to take more than that. He decided not to tell anyone what he was planning, on the not entirely unreasonable basis that they would have told him not to do it.
Over the next few days his mind filled with plans, each more complicated and extravagant than the last. Mr. Pennyworth despaired.
“I do believe,” he announced, scratching his dusty mustache, “that you are getting, if anything, worse. You are not Fading. You are obvious, boy. You are difficult to miss. If you came to me in company with a purple lion, a green elephant, and a scarlet unicorn astride which was the King of England in his royal robes, I do believe that it is you and you alone that people would stare at, dismissing the others as minor irrelevancies.”
Bod simply stared at him, and said nothing. He was wondering whether there were special shops in the places where the living people gathered that sold only headstones, and if so how he could go about finding one, and Fading was the least of his problems.
He took advantage of Miss Borrow’s willingness to be diverted from the subjects of grammar and composition to the subject of anything else at all to ask her about money—how exactly it worked, how one used it to get things one wanted. Bod had a number of coins he had found over the years (he had learned that the best place to find money was to go, afterward, to wherever courting couples had used the grass of the graveyard as a place to cuddle and snuggle and kiss and roll about. He would often find metal coins on the ground, in the place where they had been), and he thought perhaps he could finally get some use from them.
“How much would a headstone be?” he asked Miss Borrows.
“In my time,” she told him, “they were fifteen guineas. I do not know what they would be today. More, I imagine. Much, much more.”
Bod had fifty-three pence. It would, he was quite certain, not be enough.
It had been four years, almost half a lifetime, since Bod had visited the Indigo Man’s tomb. But he still remembered the way. He climbed to the top of the hill, until he was above the whole town, above even the top of the apple tree, above even the steeple of the ruined church, up where the Frobisher vault stood like a rotten tooth. He slipped down into it, and down and down and still farther down, down to the tiny stone steps cut into the center of the hill, and those he descended until he reached the stone chamber at the base of the hill. It was dark in that tomb, dark as a deep mine, but Bod saw as the dead see and the room gave up its secrets to him.
The Sleer was coiled around the wall of the barrow. It was as he remembered it, all smoky tendrils and hate and greed. This time, however, he was not afraid of it.
FEAR ME, whispered the Sleer. FOR I GUARD THINGS PRECIOUS AND NEVER-LOST.
“I don’t fear you,” said Bod. “Remember? And I need to take something away from here.”
NOTHING EVER LEAVES, came the reply from the coiled thing in the darkness. THE KNIFE, THE BROOCH, THE GOBLET. I GUARD THEM IN THE DARKNESS. I WAIT.
In the center of the room was a slab of rock, and on it they lay: a stone knife, a brooch, and a goblet.
“Pardon me for asking,” said Bod, “but was this your grave?”
MASTER SETS US HERE ON THE PLAIN TO GUARD, BURIES OUR SKULLS BENEATH THIS STONE, LEAVES US HERE KNOWING WHAT WE HAVE TO DO. WE GUARDS THE TREASURES UNTIL MASTER COME
S BACK. “I expect that he’s forgotten all about you,” pointed out Bod. “I’m sure he’s been dead himself for ages.”
WE ARE THE SLEER. WE GUARD.
Bod wondered just how long ago you had to go back before the deepest tomb inside the hill was on a plain, and he knew it must have been an extremely long time ago. He could feel the Sleer winding its waves of fear around him, like the tendrils of some carnivorous plant. He was beginning to feel cold, and slow, as if he had been bitten in the heart by some arctic viper and it was starting to pump its icy venom through his body.
He took a step forward, so he was standing against the stone slab, and he reached down and closed his fingers around the coldness of the brooch.
HISH! whispered the Sleer. WE GUARDS THAT FOR THE MASTER.
“He won’t mind,” said Bod. He took a step backward, walking toward the stone steps, avoiding the desiccated remains of people and animals on the floor.
The Sleer writhed angrily, twining around the tiny chamber like ghost smoke. Then it slowed. IT COMES BACK, said the Sleer in its tangled triple voice. ALWAYS COMES BACK.
Bod went up the stone steps inside the hill as fast as he could. At one point he imagined that there was something coming after him, but when he broke out of the top, into the Frobisher vault, and he could breathe the cool dawn air, nothing moved or followed.
Bod sat in the open air on the top of the hill and held the brooch. He thought it was all black, at first, but then the sun rose, and he could see that the stone in the center of the black metal was a swirling red. It was the size of a robin’s egg, and Bod stared into the stone wondering if there were things moving in its heart, his eyes and soul deep in the crimson world. If Bod had been smaller he would have wanted to put it into his mouth.
The stone was held in place by a black metal clasp, by something that looked like claws, with something else crawling around it. The something else looked almost snakelike, but it had too many heads. Bod wondered if that was what the Sleer looked like, in the daylight.
He wandered down the hill, taking all the shortcuts he knew, through the ivy tangle that covered the Bartleby family vault (and inside, the sound of the Bartlebies grumbling and readying for sleep) and on and over and through the railings and into the potter’s field.
He called, “Liza! Liza!” and looked around.
“Good morrow, young lummox,” said Liza’s voice. Bod could not see her, but there was an extra shadow beneath the hawthorn tree, and, as he approached it, the shadow resolved itself into something pearlescent and translucent in the early-morning light. Something girl-like. Something gray eyed. “I should be decently sleeping,” she said. “What kind of carrying-on is this?”
“Your headstone,” he said. “I wanted to know what you want on it.”
“My name,” she said. “It must have my name on it, with a big E, for Elizabeth, like the old queen that died when I was born, and a big haitch, for Hempstock. More than that I care not, for I did never master my letters.”
“What about dates?” asked Bod.
“Willyum the Conker ten sixty-six,” she sang, in the whisper of the dawn wind in the hawthorn bush. “A big E if you please. And a big haitch.”
“Did you have a job?” asked Bod. “I mean, when you weren’t being a witch?”
“I done laundry,” said the dead girl, and then the morning sunlight flooded the wasteland, and Bod was alone.
It was nine in the morning, when all the world is sleeping. Bod was determined to stay awake. He was, after all, on a mission. He was eight years old, and the world beyond the graveyard held no terrors for him.
Clothes. He would need clothes. His usual dress, of a gray winding sheet, was, he knew, quite wrong. It was good in the graveyard, the same color as stone and as shadows. But if he was going to dare the world beyond the graveyard walls, he would need to blend in there.
There were some clothes in the crypt beneath the ruined church, but Bod did not want to go down to the crypt, not even in daylight. While Bod was prepared to justify himself to Master and Mistress Owens, he was not about to explain himself to Silas; the very thought of those dark eyes angry, or worse still, disappointed, filled him with shame.
There was a gardener’s hut at the far end of the graveyard, a small green building that smelled like motor oil and in which the old mower sat and rusted, unused, along with an assortment of ancient garden tools. The hut had been abandoned when the last gardener had retired, before Bod was born, and the task of keeping the graveyard had been shared between the council (who sent in a man to cut the grass, once a month from April to September) and local volunteers.
A huge padlock on the door protected the contents of the hut, but Bod had long ago discovered the loose wooden board in the back. Sometimes he would go to the gardener’s hut, and sit, and think, when he wanted to be by himself.
As long as he had been going to the hut there had been a brown workingman’s jacket hanging on the back of the door, forgotten or abandoned years before, along with a green-stained pair of gardening jeans. The jeans were much too big for him, but he rolled up the cuffs until his feet showed, then he made a belt out of brown garden twine, and tied it around his waist. There were boots in one corner, and he tried putting them on, but they were so big and encrusted with mud and concrete that he could barely shuffle them, and if he took a step, the boots remained on the floor of the shed. He pushed the jacket out through the space in the loose board, squeezed himself out, then put it on. If he rolled up the sleeves, he decided, it worked quite well. It had big pockets, and he thrust his hands into them, and felt quite the dandy.
Bod walked down to the main gate of the graveyard, and looked out through the bars. A bus rattled past in the street; there were cars there and noise and shops. Behind him, a cool green shade, overgrown with trees and ivy: home.
His heart pounding, Bod walked out into the world.
Abanazer Bolger had seen some odd types in his time; if you owned a shop like Abanazer’s, you’d see them too. The shop, in the warren of streets in the Old Town—a little bit antique shop, a little bit junk shop, a little bit pawnbroker’s (and not even Abanazer himself was entirely certain which bit was which)—brought odd types and strange people, some of them wanting to buy, some of them needing to sell. Abanazer Bolger traded over the counter, buying and selling, and he did a better trade behind the counter and in the back room, accepting objects that may not have been acquired entirely honestly, and then quietly shifting them on. His business was an iceberg. Only the dusty little shop was visible on the surface. The rest of it was underneath, and that was just how Abanazer Bolger wanted it.
Abanazer Bolger had thick spectacles and a permanent expression of mild distaste, as if he had just realized that the milk in his tea had been on the turn and he could not get the sour taste of it out of his mouth. The expression served him well when people tried to sell him things. “Honestly,” he would tell them, sour faced, “it’s not really worth anything at all. I’ll give you what I can, though, as it has sentimental value.” You were lucky to get anything like what you thought you wanted from Abanazer Bolger.
A business like Abanazer Bolger’s brought in strange people, but the boy who came in that morning was one of the strangest Abanazer could remember in a lifetime of cheating strange people out of their valuables. He looked to be about seven years old, and dressed in his grandfather’s clothes. He smelled like a shed. His feet were bare. His hair was long and shaggy, and he looked extremely grave. His hands were deep in the pockets of a dusty brown jacket, but even with the hands out of sight, Abanazer could see that something was clutched extremely tightly—protectively—in the boy’s right hand.
“Excuse me,” said the boy.
“Aye, aye, Sonny Jim,” said Abanazer Bolger warily. Kids, he thought. They’ve nicked something, or they’re trying to sell their toys. Whichever it was, he usually said no. Buy stolen property from a kid, and next thing you knew you’d have an enraged adult accusing you of having g
iven little Johnnie or Matilda a tenner for their wedding ring. More trouble than they was worth, kids.
“I need something for a friend of mine,” said the boy. “And I thought maybe you could buy something I’ve got.”
“I don’t buy stuff from kids,” said Abanazer Bolger flatly.
Bod took his hand out of his pocket and put the brooch down on the grimy counter top. Bolger glanced at it, then he looked at it. He removed his spectacles. He took an eyepiece from the counter top and he screwed it into his eye. He turned on a little light on the counter and examined the brooch through the eyeglass. “Snakestone?” he said, to himself, not to the boy. Then he took the eyepiece out, replaced his glasses, and fixed the boy with a sour and suspicious look.
“Where did you get this?” Abanazer Bolger asked.
Bod said, “Do you want to buy it?”
“You stole it. You’ve nicked this from a museum or somewhere, didn’t you?”
“No,” said Bod flatly. “Are you going to buy it, or shall I go and find somebody who will?”
Abanazer Bolger’s sour mood changed then. Suddenly he was all affability. He smiled broadly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just you don’t see many pieces like this. Not in a shop like this. Not outside of a museum. But I would certainly like it. Tell you what. Why don’t we sit down over tea and biscuits—I’ve got a packet of chocolate chip cookies in the back room—and decide how much something like this is worth? Eh?”
Bod was relieved that the man was finally being friendly. “I need enough to buy a stone,” he said. “A headstone for a friend of mine. Well, she’s not really my friend. Just someone I know. I think she helped make my leg better, you see.”
Abanazer Bolger, paying little attention to the boy’s prattle, led him behind the counter, and opened the door to the storeroom, a windowless little space every inch of which was crammed high with teetering cardboard boxes, each filled with junk. There was a safe in there, in the corner, a big old one. There was a box filled with violins, an accumulation of stuffed dead animals, chairs without seats, books and prints.