After digging the pit and coating it with salt and iron, I had to practise getting the bait-dish down into the pit without spilling a single drop of blood. Of course, because it was only part of my training, we used water rather than blood but the Spook took it very seriously and usually got annoyed if I didn’t manage to do it first time. But on this occasion he didn’t get the chance. I’d managed it at Horshaw and I was just as good in practice, succeeding ten times in a row. Despite that, the Spook didn’t give me one word of praise and I was starting to feel a bit annoyed.

Next came one practical I really enjoyed – using the Spook’s silver chain. There was a six-foot post set up in the western garden and the idea was to cast the chain over it. The Spook made me stand at various distances from it and practise for over an hour at a time, keeping in mind that at some point it might be a real witch I’d be facing, and if I missed, I wouldn’t get another chance. There was a special way to use the chain. You coiled it over your left hand and cast it with a flick of your wrist so that it spun widdershins, falling in a left-handed spiral to enclose the post and tighten against it. From a distance of eight feet I could now get the chain over the post nine times out of ten but, as usual, the Spook was grudging with his praise.

‘Not bad, I suppose,’ he said. ‘But don’t get smug, lad. A real witch won’t oblige you by standing still while you throw that chain. By the end of the year I’ll expect ten out of ten and nothing less!’

I felt more than a bit annoyed at that. I’d been working hard and had improved a lot. Not only that, I’d just bound my first boggart and done it without any help from the Spook. It made me wonder if he’d done any better during his own apprenticeship!

In the afternoon the Spook allowed me into his library to work by myself, reading and making notes, but he only let me read certain books. He was very strict about that. I was still in my first year, so boggarts were my main area of study. But sometimes, when he was off doing something else, I couldn’t help having a glance at some of his other books too.

So, after reading my fill of boggarts, I went to the three long shelves near the window and chose one of the large leather-bound notebooks from the very top shelf. They were diaries, some of them written by spooks hundreds of years ago. Each one covered a period of about five years.

This time I knew exactly what I was looking for. I chose one of the Spook’s earliest diaries, curious to see how he’d coped with the job as a young man and whether he’d shaped up better than me. Of course, he’d been a priest before training to be a spook so he’d have been really old for an apprentice.

Anyway, I picked a few pages at random and started to read. I recognized his handwriting, of course, but a stranger reading an extract for the first time wouldn’t have guessed the Spook had written it. When he talks, his voice is typical County, down to earth and without a hint of what my dad calls ‘airs and graces’. When he writes it’s different. It’s as if all those books he’s read have altered his voice, whereas I mostly write the way I talk: if my dad were ever to read my notes he’d be proud of me and know I was still his son.

At first what I read didn’t seem any different from the Spook’s more recent writings, apart from the fact that he made more mistakes. As usual he was very honest, and each time explained just how he’d gone wrong. As he was always telling me, it was important to write everything down and so learn from the past.

He described how, one week, he’d spent hours and hours practising with the bait-dish and his master had got angry because he couldn’t manage a better average than eight out of ten! That made me feel a lot better. And then I came to something that lifted my spirits even further. The Spook hadn’t bound his first boggart until he’d been an apprentice for almost eighteen months. What’s more, it had only been a hairy boggart, not a dangerous ripper!

That was the best I could find to cheer me up: clearly the Spook had been a good, hard-working apprentice. A lot of what I found was routine so I skipped through the pages quickly until I reached the point when my master became a spook, working on his own. I’d seen all I really needed to see and was just about to close the book when something caught my eye. I flipped back to the start of the entry just to make sure, and this is what I read. It’s not exactly word for word but I have a good memory and it’s pretty close. And after reading what he’d written, I certainly wasn’t going to forget it.

Late in the autumn, I journeyed far to the north of the County, summoned there to deal with an abhuman, a creature who had Brought terror to the district for far too long. Many families in the locality had suffered at its cruel hands and there had been many deaths and maimings. I came down into the forest at dusk.. All the leaves had fallen and were rotten and brown on the ground, and the tower was like a black demon finger pointing at the sky. A girl had been seen waving from its solitary window, Beckoning frantically for aid. The creature had seized her for its own and now held her as its plaything, imprisoning her within those dank stone walls. Firstly I made a fire and sat gazing into its flames while gathering my courage. Taking the whetstone from my bag, I sharpened my blade until my fingers could not touch its edge without yielding blood. Finally, at midnight, I went to the tower and hammered out a challenge upon the door with my staff. The creature came forth brandishing a great club and roared out in anger. It was a foul thing dressed in the skins of animals, reeking of blood and animal fat, and it attacked me with terrible fury. At first I retreated, waiting my chance, but the next time it hurled itself at me I released the blade from its recess in my staff and, using all my strength, drove it deep into its head. It fell stone-dead at my feet but I had no regrets at taking its life, for it would have killed again and again and would never have been sated. It was then that the girl called out to me, her siren voice lurinq me up the stone steps, There, in the topmost room of the tower, I found her upon a bed of straw, bounds fast with a long silver chain. With skin like milk. and long fair hair, she was by far the prettiest woman that my eyes had ever seen., Her name was Meg and she pleaded to be released from the chain and her voice was so persuasive that my reason fled and the world spun about me. No sooner had I unbound her from the coils of the chain than she fastened her lips hard upon mine own. And so sweet were her kisses that I almost swooned away in her arms. I awoke with sunlightt streaming through the window and saw her clearly for the first time. She was one of the Lamia witches, and the mark of the snake was upon her. Fair of face though she was, her spine was covered with green and yellow scales. Full of anger at her deceit, I bound her again with the chain, and carried her at fast to the pit at Chipenden. When I released her, she struggled so hard that I barely overcame her and was forced to pull her by her long hair through the trees, while she ranted and screamed fit to wake the dead. It was raining hard and she slipped on the wet grass but I carried on dragging her along the ground, though her bare arms and legs were scratched by brambles. It was cruel but it had to be done. But when I started to tip her over the edge into the pit, she clutched at my kniees and began to sob pitifully. I stood there for a long time, full of anguish, about to topple over the edge myself, until at last I made a decision that I may come to regret. I helped her to her feet and wrapped my arms about her and we both wept. How could I put her into the pit, when I realized that I loved her better than my own soul? I begged her forgiveness and then we turned together and, hand in hand, walked away from, the pit. From this encounter I have gained a silver chain, an expensive tool which otherwise would have taken many long months of hard work to acquire. What I have lost, or might yet lose, I dare not think about. Beauty is a terrible thing; it binds a man tighter than a silver chain about a witch.