The boy turned to look back. He stood in the doorway and I knew he was daring me to follow him. I hesitated. Then he grimaced and disappeared into the cottage.

The cat remained on the doorstep watching me and its green eyes seemed malevolent.

I turned and ran home as fast as I could.

I knew he was, in Mrs. Penlock’s words, “That varmint of Mother Ginny’s.” And I trembled with fear and amazement that I had stood on the threshold of Mother Ginny’s evil abode and had really been on the point of going in.

I thought about the boy a great deal and I began to learn something about him, although Mother Ginny and her Varmint were evidently not a subject to be discussed in front of the young. Often when I entered the kitchen the conversation stopped. It was usually about girls having babies when they shouldn’t or some misdemeanour which had been committed—and now, of course, Mother Ginny.

I knew that she lived in her lonely cottage in the woods with her cat and she had been quite alone until the coming of the Varmint, which had been only some months before. “That,” said Mrs. Penlock to the company seated at the table, which included most of the staff, for they were having their midmorning refreshment—hot sweet tea and oat biscuits, “was something to set the cat among the pigeons. Who would have thought of Mother Ginny having a family! You’d have thought she’d been begot by the Devil. That Varmint is said to be her grandson so she must have had a husband or at least a son or daughter. And now she has this boy … Digory.”

He had come to her by stealth, I discovered. One day he hadn’t been there and the next he was. The story went that he had been brought to his grandmother because he was now an orphan.

It was apparently not long before he had made his presence known. Even before I discovered him at the fish market people were aware of him—and watchful. “Such another as his Granny,” they said.

Now more than ever I wanted to hear about Mother Ginny and the place where she and her grandson lived.

I learned by degrees. It was a pity the servants knew that Mother Ginny was not a subject my parents would wish to be discussed before me. They were therefore wary; but Mother Ginny and her grandson were irresistible topics of conversation, and I had a habit of making myself unobtrusive. I would sit curled up in a corner of the kitchen—even sometimes pretending to be asleep—while I listened to the chatter; and if I could remain really quiet and manage to fade into the kitchen landscape I could glean a good deal.

Mrs. Penlock was a great talker. She ruled the kitchen with rigid conventionality; she knew the procedure for every occasion—her rights and everyone else’s rights; she was a great upholder of rights; she was determined that these should not be diminished or exceeded; and woe betide anyone who tried to prevent her from receiving her due.

She knew the habits of all the maids and I was sure they would find it very difficult to hide any transgression from her. She reckoned that she knew her place and she expected everyone else to know his or hers.

“Mother Ginny,” I heard her say, “oh, I wouldn’t like to get round the wrong side of that one. It would be more than your life was worth … and I mean that. You girls can laugh but witches is witches and no matter if they do give you something to get you out of your little bits of trouble … you’d be fools to get caught up with the likes of them. I’ve heard talk of folks as got real pisky-mazed cos they would wander in them woods after dark and go near Mother Ginny’s place. Wander round and round they do, not knowing where they be to and the piskies all out there … though you couldn’t see ’em … laughing at ’em … And not to be right again till that Mother Ginny have took off the spell. It ain’t no laughing matter, young ’Tilda. You go wandering out in them woods with Stableman John and you’ll see what happens to ’ee. Then you’ll be to Mother Ginny to see if she can give you something to help ’ee out. Wouldn’t catch me being caught with the likes of Mother Ginny … no matter what.”

So Mother Ginny was a witch. I gathered little bits of information about her. Her clients usually went to consult her after dark because what they wanted to ask her about was a secret between her and themselves. When the servants passed her cottage they would cross their fingers; and some of them carried garlic with them because that was said to have special powers against evil. Few would venture past the cottage after dark. And that boy Digory actually lived there!

He and Mother Ginny had become of great interest to me.

When I wanted to learn something I asked my father. He and I often went riding together. He was proud of my skill on a horse and I was constantly trying to impress him with my excellence. The manner in which he always treated me as an adult endeared him to me, for he always listened to what I had to say and gave me a sensible answer.

It was autumn, I remember, and the leaves were just beginning to turn bronze. Many of them had already fallen and made a rich carpet beneath us. There was a dampness in the air, and mist, although it was midmorning, touched the trees with a greyish blue which made them look very mysterious.

We came to the beaten track which led to Mother Ginny’s cottage and I said: “Papa, why are people afraid of Mother Ginny?”

He answered at once: “Because she is different from themselves. Many people would like us all to be made in the same mould. They fear what they do not understand.”

“Why don’t they understand Mother Ginny?”

“Because she dabbles in mysteries.”

“Do you know what they are?”

He shook his head.

“Are you afraid of her?”

He burst out laughing. “I am not one of those people who wish everyone to conform. I think variety makes life more interesting. Besides, I’m rather odd myself. Do you know anyone else who is like me?”

“No,” I said. “I certainly do not. There is only one of you. But that is different from being Mother Ginny.”

“Why?”

“Because you are rich and important.”

“Oh, there you have hit the nail right on the head. I can afford to be eccentric. I can do the strangest things and people dare not question.”

“They would be afraid to.”

“Because their well-being depends on me to some extent. That is why they respect me. They do not depend on Mother Ginny in that way but they think she has powers which come from the unknown and they are afraid of her.”

“It is a good thing to have people afraid of you.”

“If you are strong, perhaps. But the poor and the humble … they must beware.”

I continued to think of Mother Ginny. I was fascinated by everything connected with her—and that included Digory. I used to lie in wait for him and talk to him. We would sit on the banks of the river throwing stones into the water—a favourite occupation of his—listening to the plop as they dropped and seeing who could throw the farthest.

He asked me questions about the Big House, “That Cador” he called it. I described it in detail: the hall with its refectory table set with pewter plates and goblets; the coat of arms on the wall among the weaponry; helmets and halberds; the Elizabethan pole-arm, swords and shields; the drawing room with its tapestries depicting the Wars of the Roses; the fine linen-fold panelling; the punch room where the men took their punch and port wine; the chairs with their backs exquisitely embroidered in Queen Anne’s tatting; the room where King Charles had slept when he was fleeing from the Roundheads—a very special room this, which must never be altered. I told him how I used to climb onto the bed in which the King had lain listening for the approach of his enemies and wondering how long it would be before they hunted him out.

Digory would listen intently. He used to call out: “Go on. Go on. Tell me some more.”

And I would romance a little, making up stories of how the great Cador—the Warrior—had saved the King from capture; but reverence for the history learned from my governess, Miss Caster, made me add hastily: “But he was caught in the end.”

I told him about the solarium, the old kitchens and the chapel with its stone floor and squint through which the lepers used to look because, on account of their disease, they were not allowed to come in where ordinary folks were.

He was fascinated by the squint. I told him that there were two other peepholes in the house. These we called peeps. One of them looked down on the hall so that people could see who their visitors were without being seen themselves. This was in the solarium; the other was in another room. This looked down on the chapel. It was in an alcove where ladies could sit and enjoy the service from above on those occasions when there were guests in the house with whom it would be unseemly for them to mix.

In exchange he told me a little about his home which he was at pains to make me believe was more impressive than my own. In a way it was because it was so strangely mysterious. Cador was a magnificent house but there were many such houses in England; and according to Digory there were no cottages in the world like Mother Ginny’s.

Digory had a natural eloquence which even a lack of conventional education could not stem. He made me see the room which was like a cavern from another world. Jars and bottles stood on the shelves—all containing some mysterious brew. Drying herbs hung on the rafters; a fire always burned in the grate and it was like no other fire; the flames were blue and red and pictures formed in them. Battles were fought; the Devil himself appeared once with red eyes and a red coat and black horns in his head. By the fire sat the cat which was no ordinary cat; she had red eyes and when the firelight shone on them they were the colour of the Devil’s eyes, which showed she was one of his creatures. There was a black cauldron on the fire, always bubbling, and in the steam which rose from it spirits danced. Sometimes Digory could see the face of some inhabitant of the neighbourhood; and that meant something important. He was always discovering something fresh. There were two rooms in the cottage—one leading from the other. The one at the back was where he and his grandmother slept—she on the truckle bed with a red cover, and the black cat always slept at the foot of her bed. Digory’s place was on the talfat—a board placed immediately below the ceiling which I was able to visualize because I had seen it in some of the labourers’ cottages. There was a stone-paved yard at the back and in this was an outhouse in which Mother Ginny stored her concoctions—a source of income to her and which could cure anything from a cold in the head to a stone in the kidney. She was very clever; she could get babies for people who wanted them and get rid of them for people who didn’t want them. She was as clever as God.