Black Queen Read Free Page A

thinking, just what they’re going to do next.” Now she was being scary again. “But the thing is, Billy,” she went on, lowering her voice confidentially, “I don’t want anyone in the neighbourhood to know I’ve gone, that you’re feeding my cat for me. If word gets about a place is empty, you can get burglarized, vandalized. So you’ll be the only neighbour who’ll know I’m not here. No-one else, right? You hear what I’m saying? Best if you say nothing to nobody, right? Our little secret.”
    I nodded.
    “Promise me then?”
    “I promise,” I said, and at once wished I hadn’t. Desperately, I sought for a way out, a way not to have to do it, any of it. “What about the cat food? What about the clothes?”

    We were outside in the garden by now. She crouched down and lifted up an empty flower pot by the sundial. “I’ll leave the key right here, Billy. How’ll that be? Then you can let yourself in. I’ll leave out his bowl and all the cat food you’ll need on the kitchen table, and a can opener with it. There’ll be some milk left in the ice-box. When it’s finished you can give him water instead. He’ll be fine. I’ve got an old hat and coat that’ll do the trick. I’ll leave them in the kitchen for you, OK? I feed him right here. You just come down these steps tap-tapping away at his bowl with a spoon, and calling him like this: ‘Rammy Rambo! Rammy Rambo!’ He’ll come, no problem. But don’t ever let him inside the house, OK? First off, he loves it in there, you’d never get him out again. Second, he tears my curtains to pieces with his claws; and third, he makes messes – if you get my meaning.”
    I did. But the cat seemed the least of my worries as I ran down the garden to climb back over. I just wanted to get away before she asked me to do anything more. Already I had promised to keep a secret I didn’t want to keep, dress up like some mad old witch,
and
feed a cat that I didn’t like the look of, not one bit.
    “Hey, Billy,” she called after me, “aren’t you forgetting something?”
    For a moment I had no idea what she was talking about. Then I saw Matey hopping towards me through the long grass. I bent to pick him up.
    She was chuckling. “The day after tomorrow, Billy. Don’t you go forgetting now.”
    Forget? I only wished I could.

Chapter 5
    Sometimes It’s Hard to Be a Woman
    I LAY IN bed that night quite unable to sleep. The more I thought about it the worse it became – everything I had let myself in for. And what about the Black Queen herself? Who on earth was she? What was she? I just couldn’t get it out of my head that she really might be some kind of witch. She certainly had powers. Hadn’t she healed my bee sting? Hadn’t she bewitched me into promising to do all sorts of things I didn’t want to? At best she was strange; at worst . . . it made me shiver to think of it.

    All the next day I kept thinking that I should tell my mother all about her, about what the Black Queen had asked me to do. But I said nothing. To be honest, it wasn’t because I had promised to keep quiet about it; it was because I had it in my mind – and I know it sounds silly – that the Black Queen might do something terrible to me if she ever found out. Maybe she’d turn me into a bee. Maybe all those bees were spellbound spirits she had punished, condemning them to live out their days in the beehive at the bottom of her garden. My mind was in a constant whirl of terror. I longed to tell all, and that evening I very nearly did too.
    After supper I was playing chess with my father. Rula was watching and fidgeting as usual. I just couldn’t concentrate, but it wasn’t Rula’s fault. Every time I looked at the black queen on the chessboard my mind drifted back to Number 22. I kept wondering why there should be so many chessboards there. And why have boards without the pieces? Could they be part of some mysterious and dreadful witch’s rite?
    My father had me checkmate