Catweazle

his
mind,’ he whispered.
    ‘You’ll
have to speak up,’ said Mr Bennet at the other end of the line.
    ‘It’s
difficult,’ said the vicar. ‘He’s here in the room with me.’
    Catweazle
drew Adamcos and brandished the knife, wildly.
    ‘O
invisible Demon,’ he called. ‘I bid thee appear!’
    ‘Put
that knife down!’ said the vicar loudly.
    Mr
Bennet began to get worried. ‘Is he attacking you?’ he asked.
    ‘No, I
think he’s harmless,’ said the vicar.
    Catweazle
put his knife away. ‘If ’tis a friendly demon then all is well,’ he said.
    Ignoring
him as best he could, the vicar continued to talk to Mr Bennet. ‘Is there a
village or hamlet near you called Castle Saburac?’
    ‘Castle
Saburac?’ repeated Mr Bennet. ‘I don’t think so.’
    At the
mention of Castle Saburac, Carrot looked up. It was Catweazle! He hadn’t
disappeared at all! But what was he doing in Banden?
    In the
vicarage, Catweazle came closer and closer to the vicar, fascinated by the
white thing he was holding up to his face.
    ‘Dost
conjure with a magic bone?’ he asked.
    ‘Here,
have one of these, old man,’ said the vicar nervously as he saw Catweazle
standing beside him, and offered him a cigarette.
    Catweazle
sniffed it, put it in his mouth and swallowed it, while the vicar still
struggled to find out who his troublesome visitor was.
    ‘He
says he comes from near your farm, so I thought you might be able to identify
him.’
    ‘Why
talkest thou to that bone?’ asked Catweazle.
    ‘Phone,
not bone,’ said the vicar angrily.
    Mr Bennet
turned to Carrot, ‘I think they’re both mad,’ he said.
    Catweazle,
unable to resist it any longer, grabbed the phone from the astonished clergyman
and yelled down it, ‘If thou art a Demon, then I will destroy thee I’ Mr Bennet
was nearly deafened.
    Then
the vicar managed to get the phone away from Catweazle. ‘Sorry about that,’ he
said.
    ‘Look,
Vicar,’ said Mr Bennet. ‘We’ll get this sorted out. I’ll pop over as soon as I
can. If he gets violent, I should phone for the police.’
    He hung
up. ‘He says there’s an old chap there who knows me or something, and that he’s
gone potty.’
    ‘Are
you going now, Dad?’ asked Carrot anxiously.
    ‘Well,
not like this,’ said Mr Bennet, who was in his farm clothes and needed a shave.
    As his
father went upstairs Carrot thought frantically how he could rescue Catweazle.
Somehow he had to get him back to Castle Saburac. The old man was becoming an
awful nuisance. Sooner or later his father was bound to find out about him. He
was already beginning to wonder why Carrot spent so much time in the woods and
why he was always so short of money.
    He ran
out into the yard, where Sam was bent over the engine of Apollo Twelve. The
noise was deafening and clouds of smoke poured from the exhaust.
    ‘Runnin’
lovely now, she is,’ Sam shouted over the engine.
    ‘How
about that spin your promised me?’ shouted Carrot.
    Sam put
down the bonnet. ‘You’re on!’ he said, grinning at Carrot. ‘Where d’you want to
go?’
    ‘Banden
church,’ said Carrot.
    ‘Whatever
for?’ said Sam as they got in.
    ‘Well,’
said Carrot. ‘It’s interesting. Early Perpendicular.’
    ‘Is
it?’ said Sam as the car rattled out of the yard.
    ‘She’ll
do forty down Long View hill,’ he said proudly.
    As they
reached his cottage, Sam stopped Apollo Twelve and called to old Mrs Woodyard who
sat dozing in the front garden, ‘I’m going over to Banden, mother.’
    ‘What
for?’ old Mrs Woodyard said, opening her eyes and sitting up.
    ‘Taking
Mr Bennet’s boy to see the church.’
    ‘I’ll
get my coat.’
    ‘You
don’t want to come, mother!’ called Sam. He turned sadly to Carrot. ‘I can’t do
anything with her. She always has to come. ’Fraid you’ll have to sit in the
back.’
    Mrs
Woodyard had not figured in Carrot’s rescue plan at all. It was going to make
things doubly difficult.
    With a
black hat firmly jammed down over her ears and an overcoat buttoned up to her
neck, she came down the path to the front gate.
    ‘Time
you weeded this path,’ she said to Sam.
    ‘Yes,
Mum,’ he said and helped her into the car. She brushed his arm aside. ‘I ain’t one
of your fancy girls,’ she said.
    Sam,
who was thirty-five and never went out with girls because his mother
disapproved, sighed as he tucked a rug round the old lady.
    ‘And
not too fast, Sam,’ she said, as Apollo Twelve moved off. By the time