What Aunt Zelda Saw in the Duck Pond

We are back in the Young Army nursery.

In the semidarkness of the nursery the Matron Midwife puts the baby Septimus in a cot and sits down wearily. She keeps glancing anxiously at the door as if waiting for someone to come in. No one appears.

A minute or two later she heaves herself up from her chair and goes over to the cot where her own baby is crying and picks the child up. At that moment the door is flung open, and the Matron Midwife wheels around, white-faced, frightened.

A tall woman in black stands in the doorway. Over her black, well-pressed robes she wears the starched white apron of a nurse, but around her waist is a bloodred belt showing the three black stars of DomDaniel.

She has come for Septimus Heap.

The Nurse is late. She got lost on her way to the nursery, and now she is flustered and afraid. DomDaniel does not tolerate lateness. She sees the Matron Midwife with a baby, just as she has been told she would. She does not know that the Matron Midwife is holding her own child in her arms and that Septimus Heap is asleep in a cot in the dim shadows of the nursery. The Nurse runs over to the Midwife and seizes the baby from her. The Midwife protests. She tries to wrest her baby back from the Nurse, but her desperation is more than matched by the Nurse's determination to make it back to the boat in time for the tide.

The taller, younger Nurse wins. She bundles up the baby in a long red cloth emblazoned with three black stars and runs out, pursued by the screaming Midwife who now knows exactly how Sarah Heap felt only a few hours ago. The Midwife is forced to give up her chase at the barracks door where the Nurse, flaunting her three black stars, has the Matron Midwife arrested by the guard, and disappears into the night, triumphantly carrying off the Midwife's own child to DomDaniel.

Back in the nursery the old woman who is meant to be babysitting wakes up. Coughing and wheezing, she gets up and makes up four nighttime bottles for her charges. One each for the triplets - Boys 409, 410 and 411 - and one for the newest recruit to the Young Army, twelve-hours-old Septimus Heap, destined to be known for the next ten years as Boy 412.

Aunt Zelda sighed. This was as she had expected. Next she asked the moon to follow the Midwife's child. There was something else she needed to know.

The Nurse just makes it back to the boat in time. A Thing stands at the stern of the boat and sculls her across the river using the old fishermen's way with just one oar. On the otber side she is met by a Darke horseman, riding a huge black horse. He pulls the Nurse and the child up behind him and canters off into the night. They have a long and uncomfortable ride ahead of them.

By the time they reach DomDaniel's lair high up in the old slate quarries of the Badlands, the Midwife's baby is screaming and the Nurse has a terrible headache. DomDaniel is waiting to see his prize, which he takes to be Septimus Heap, the seventh son of a seventh son. The Apprentice that every Wizard and every Necromancer dreams of. The Apprentice who will give him the power to return him to the Castle and take back what is rightfully his.

He looks at the screaming baby with distaste. The screams make his head ache and his ears ring. It is a big baby for a newborn, thinks DomDaniel, and an ugly one too. He doesn't like it very much. The Necromancer has an air of disappointment about him as he tells the Nurse to take the baby away.

The Nurse puts the baby in the waiting cot and goes to bed. She feels too ill to get up the next day, and no one bothers to feed the Midwife's son until well into the next night. There is no Apprentice Supper for this Apprentice.

Aunt Zelda sat by the duck pond and smiled. The Apprentice is free of his Darke Master. Septimus Heap is alive, and has found his family. The Princess is safe. She remembered something Marcia often said: things do have a habit of working out. Eventually.