They had not visited the vegetable garden again until the Government radio confirmed that the Madness was over.

Since then, they had seen no one but two nomad families who had passed by with little to add to what they had guessed already – that there were no neighbours in evidence for several kilometres. Woodbury Croft was on its own.

Molly, her two assistants, and one or two of the older girls had started planning. The vegetable garden was fortunately large, for home-grown vegetables had been part of the school's policy and it could be extended. They had some seeds and looted more from the shop in the tiny abandoned village four kilometres away. (Why it had been abandoned remained a mystery; there were only four corpses – all obviously madmen – and all of the few vehicles which they were used to seeing there were gone.) They had rounded up three cows, two calves, and a bull, and about a dozen hens with a cockerel. Until their own vegetable area's extension began to produce, there was plenty to see them through the winter in the deserted fields and gardens.

Molly had begun to feel more confident; the girls (with the one or two inevitable exceptions) had rallied remarkably well; the work was getting done, and they were even managing to put in a few hours a week of classroom education, for Molly was determined that as far as possible the school should continue to be a school. Farther ahead she could not see.

She hoped they would not remain in all-female isolation for too long; it was not healthy or natural for growing girls, and Molly herself, though unmarried, frankly liked male company. She particularly missed Jock Innes, her own High Priest, and his brother Alec, who had visited the school without fail for all the festivals, and oftener if they could, to hold Circles for the staff witches and for those of the girls whose parents wished it. ('Like a convent's confessor,' he used to joke.) Perhaps Jock and Alec were dead too, now. One night, in a crisis of loneliness, Molly had sat quietly in her bedroom and opened up her astral awareness, trying to pick them up. She had been so swamped by the horror that pervaded the astral plane, at the height of the Madness, that she had withdrawn from it at once, gasping and weeping, and had not tried again.

Doreen and Kathy worked their way along the line of onions, Kathy doing most of the talking as usual. They did not look like sisters; Doreen, almost seventeen, abundant red hair caught in a waist-length ponytail, already full-breasted and wide-hipped, of whom everyone had always said 'she's the quiet one'; Kathy, just fifteen, with her short black mop and boyish figure, who was never still and never silent. Yet they had always been close and although each was in her own way essentially feminine, they seemed aware of a creative polarity of difference which they enjoyed as a man and woman might. They were the only children of witch parents who would have been reluctant to send them to boarding school, if their father's job as a foreign correspondent for The Times had not kept him (and their mother, once the girls were old enough) constantly on the move. Their mother had always arranged to be at home for the school holidays, or to take them with her, if it could be managed, to where their father was. A very gifted witch herself, she had spent much of their time together training the girls in the Craft, and they had taken to it like ducks to water, working very well as a partnership because of that very polarity of difference. It was just as well that they were close, now, because they knew it was almost certain they were orphans.

'I hope we'll be growing some spring onions, too,' Kathy was chattering. 'These big fat ones are nice, specially for cooking, I like 'em with mashed spuds, but fried is best -only fat's hard to come by now, isn't it? But spring onions, come salad time, salad's so boring if it's just lettuce and things…'

'Hey, Kath – shut up – listen…'

Then Kathy heard it too and straightened, incredulous. All along the line the girls were stopping their work, staring towards the drive. It couldn't be… but it was, engines -a big van and four motor-cycles, winding up from the road-Then they were all running, excited, Miss Hooley with them and across the field they could see Big Molly and her lot running too, and Miss Simms and the others from the cowshed.

Doreen, as she ran, felt a flash of unease. Something about the way the van drew up, two men jumping down from it to left and right, and the motor-bikes halting spread out in a neat are, two on each side of the van – all happening together, like a military operation… Don't be silly, she told herself, these days people do behave like soldiers if they've any sense, keep together, ready for anything, eyes open… She kept running, Kathy beside her and soon everybody was gathered in the drive, staring at the visitors.

'My name's Walter Crane,' the man who was obviously the leader was telling Molly. Doreen didn't like him; his eyes never seemed to blink and he stood with his feet apart like a poised boxer.

'And mine is Marie Andrews,' Molly said. So Big Molly isn't happy about him either, Doreen thought; I've only heard her use her proper name about twice, when she was upstaging people. 'We are what is left of Woodbury Croft School. Where are you from?'

'North of here… Is this all of you?' He made an economical gesture to include the assembled women and girls.

Taking him very literally (another upstaging sign, Doreen knew) Molly did a roll-call with her eyes. 'Yes, all of us… You're very lucky to have petrol, aren't you?'

'It's Government issue. From a special concealed dump.'

'Oh? Then you have some official function?'

'You could call it that, Miss Andrews.' He snapped his fingers. In a moment, all his five followers had guns in their hands. Automatics appeared from inside anoraks and two light machine-guns from motor-cycle pannier bags. Several of the girls screamed but Walter Crane snapped 'Shut up!' with such frightening authority that the screams became mere whimpers. Doreen, who had not screamed, remembered her mother's training: If anything frightening happens, breathe slowly and keep your nerve. Doreen breathed slowly, taking Kathy's hand in her own. She realized that her instinct about the arc of motor-cycles had been right; the raiders had them neatly penned.

'And what is that function, Mr Crane?' Big Molly asked. 'Terrorizing schoolgirls?'

He still did not blink. 'Our function, Miss Andrews, is rooting out witches.'

Big Molly must be breathing deeply too, Doreen thought, because she kept her cool splendidly. 'Indeed. May I see your authority for that? I presume you have one.'

'Certainly.' He had not yet produced a gun himself but now he did, and fired a single shot into the air. More screams, even more quickly smothered. When the echo had died away, he said: 'That is our authority.'

'A typical one.'

'Oh, don't misjudge us, Miss Andrews. There is always a proper trial.'

'I'm sure there is. With you, Mr Crane, as judge and jury.'

'You're misjudging us again. I am the judge. Four of my friends are the jury; allow me to introduce them – Beaver, Mac, Jake and Fatso. And Garry over there is the executioner.'

Breathe very slowly. Very, very slowly. And don't scream, whatever you do. Kathy's convulsive grip almost cracked Doreen's fingers but she was managing to keep silent, too.

'You're the headmistress, I take it, Miss Andrews?'

‘I am.'

'Then since everybody knows this is a witch school, you're the one to stand trial…' He looked around, unhurried. 'The netball field, I think. Garry, bring what we need from the van. The rest of you, take everybody over there.'

Most of the girls were by now numb with shock and it was a stumbling procession that made its way to the netball field, flanked by the four gunmen. When they reached it, all but Big Molly were herded together in a group facing one of the tall posts.