He read them again, paying particular attention to the address, and the message. The address was one word: Everywhere.
Then, with his leaking pen, he wrote a brief note to Maud, his wife. It read simply, I
Then he put the schedule back on the dashboard, looked left, looked right, looked left again and began to walk purposefully across the road. He was halfway across when a German juggernaut came around the corner, its driver crazed on caffeine, little white pills, and EEC transport regulations.
He watched its receding bulk.
Cor, he thought, that one nearly had me.
Then he looked down at the gutter.
Oh, he thought.
YES, agreed a voice from behind his left shoulder, or at least from behind the memory of his left shoulder.
The delivery man turned, and looked, and saw. At first he couldn't find the words, couldn't find anything, and then the habits of a working lifetime took over and he said, "Message for you, sir."
FOR ME?
"Yes, sir." He wished he still had a throat. He could have swallowed, if he still had a throat. "No package, I'm afraid, Mister… uh, sir. It's a message."
DELIVER IT, THEN.
"It's this, sir. Ahem.
FINALLY. There was a grin on its face, but then, given the face, there couldn't have been anything else.
THANK YOU, it continued. I MUST COMMEND YOUR DEVOTION TO DUTY.
"Sir?" The late delivery man was falling through a gray mist, and all he could see were two spots of blue, that might have been eyes, and might been distant stars.
DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death, JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
The delivery man had a brief moment to wonder whether his new companion was making a joke, and to decide that he wasn't; and then there was nothing.
* * *
Red sky in the morning. It was going to rain.
Yes.
* * *
Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell stood back with his head on one side. "Right, then," he said. "Ye're all ready. Hae ye' got it all?"
"Yes, sir."
"Pendulum o' discovery?"
"Pendulum of discovery, yes."
"Thumbscrew?"
Newt swallowed, and patted a pocket. "Thumbscrew," he said.
"Firelighters?"
"I really think, Sergeant, that—"
"Firelighters," said Newt sadly. "And matches."
[Note for Americans and other city-dwelling life-forms: the rural British, having eschewed central heating as being far too complicated and in any case weakening moral fiber, prefer a system of piling small pieces of wood and lumps of coal, topped by large, wet logs, possibly made of asbestos, into small, smoldering heaps, known as "There's nothing like a roaring open fire is there?" Since none of these ingredients are naturally inclined to burn, underneath all this they apply a small, rectangular, waxy white lump, which burns cheerfully until the weight of the fire puts it out. These little white blocks are called firelighters. No one knows why.]
"Bell, book, and candle?"
Newt patted another pocket. It contained a paper bag inside which was a small bell, of the sort that maddens budgerigars, a pink candle of the birthday cake persuasion, and a tiny book called
"Bell, book, and candle," said Newt.
"Pin?"
"Pin."
"Good lad. Never forget yer pin. It's the bayonet in yer artillery o' light."
Shadwell stood back. Newt noticed with amazement that the old man's eyes had misted over.
"I wish I was goin' with ye," he said. "O' course, this won't be anything, but it'd be good to get out and about again. It's a tryin' life, ye ken, all this lyin' in the wet bracken spying on their devilish dancin'. It gets into yer bones somethin' cruel."
He straightened up, and saluted.
"Off ye go, then, Private Pulsifer. May the armies o' glorification march wi' ye."
After Newt had driven off Shadwell thought of something, something that he'd never had the chance to do before. What he needed now was a pin. Not a military issue pin, witches, for the use of. Just an ordinary pin, such as you might stick in a map.
The map was on the wall. It was old. It didn't show Milton Keynes. It didn't show Harlow. It barely showed Manchester and Birmingham. It had been the army's HQ map for three hundred years. There were a few pins in it still, mainly in Yorkshire and Lancashire and a few in Essex, but they were almost rusted through. Elsewhere, mere brown stubs indicated the distant mission of a long-ago witchfinder.
Shadwell finally found a pin among the debris in an ashtray. He breathed on it, polished it to a shine, squinted at the map until he located Tadfield, and triumphantly rammed the pin home.
It gleamed.
Shadwell took a step backward, and saluted again. There were tears in his eyes.