Terry Pratchett - I Shall Wear Midnight

‘I suppose you think you’ve got away with it, do you?’ said a voice behind her.

Tiffany waited a moment before turning round, and when she did turn round, she was smiling. ‘Why, Miss Spruce,’ she said, ‘are you still here? Well, perhaps there are some floors that need scrubbing?’

The nurse was a vision of fury. ‘I do not scrub floors, you arrogant little—’

‘No, you don’t scrub anything, do you, Miss Spruce? I’ve noticed that! Now, Miss Flowerdew, who was here before you, now she could scrub a floor. She could scrub a floor so that you could see your face in it, although in your case, Miss Spruce, I can imagine why that would not appeal. Miss Jumper, who we had before her, would even scrub floors with sand, white sand! She chased dirt like a terrier chasing a fox!’

The nurse opened her mouth to speak, but Tiffany didn’t allow the words any space. ‘The cook has told me that you are a very religious woman, always on your knees, and that is fine by me, absolutely fine, but didn’t it ever occur to you to take a mop and bucket down there with you? People don’t need prayers, Miss Spruce; they need you to do the job in front of you, Miss Spruce. And I have had enough of you, Miss Spruce, and especially of your lovely white coat. I think Roland was very impressed by your wonderful white coat, but I am not, Miss Spruce, because you never do anything that will get it dirty .’

The nurse raised a hand. ‘I could slap you!’

‘No,’ said Tiffany firmly. ‘You couldn’t.’

The hand stayed where it was. ‘I have never been so insulted before in my life!’ screamed the enraged nurse.

‘Really?’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m genuinely surprised.’ She turned on her heel, left the nurse standing and marched over to a young guard who had just come into the hall. ‘I’ve seen you around. I don’t think I know who you are. What’s your name, please?’

The trainee guard gave what he probably thought was a salute. ‘Preston, miss.’

‘Has the Baron been taken down to the crypt, Preston?’

‘Yes, miss, and I’ve took down some lanterns and some cloths and a bucket of warm water, miss.’ He grinned when he saw her expression. ‘My grandma used to do the laying out when I was a little boy, miss. I could help, if you wanted.’

‘Did your grandma let you help?’

‘No, miss,’ said the young man. ‘She said men weren’t allowed to do that sort of thing unless they had a certificate in doctrine.’

Tiffany looked puzzled for a moment. ‘Doctrine?’

‘You know, miss. Doctrine: pills and potions and sawing off legs and similar.’

Light dawned. ‘Oh, you mean doctoring. I should hope not. This isn’t about making the poor soul better. I will do it by myself, but thank you for asking, anyway. This is women’s work.’

Exactly why it is women’s work I don’t know, she said to herself as she arrived in the crypt and rolled up her sleeves. The young guard had even thought to bring down a dish of soil and a dish of salt. 11Well done, your granny, she thought. At last someone had taught a boy something useful!

She cried as she made the old man ‘presentable’ as Granny Weatherwax called it. She always cried. It was a needful thing. But you didn’t do it where anyone else could see, not if you were a witch. People wouldn’t expect that. It would make them uneasy.

She stood back. Well, the old boy looked better than he had done yesterday, she had to admit. As a final touch, she took two pennies out of her pocket and laid them gently over his eyelids.

Those were the old customs, taught to her by Nanny Ogg, but now there was a new custom, known only to her. She leaned on the edge of the marble slab with one hand and held the bucket of water in the other. She stayed there, motionless, until the water in the bucket began to boil and ice was forming on the slab. She took the bucket outside and tipped its contents down the drain.

The castle was bustling when she had finished, and she left people to get on with things. She hesitated as she stepped out of the castle and stopped to think. People often didn’t stop to think. They thought as they went along. Sometimes it was a good idea. Just to stop moving, in case you moved the wrong way.

Roland was the Baron’s only son and, as far as Tiffany knew, his only relative, or at least his only relative who was allowed to come anywhere near the castle; after some horrible and expensive legal fighting, Roland had succeeded in banishing the dreadful aunts, the Baron’s sisters who, frankly, even the old Baron thought were as nasty a pair of old ferrets as any man should find down the trousers of his life. But there was another person who should know, who was in no conceivable way at all kin to the Baron, but was nevertheless, well, someone who should know something as important as this, as soon as possible. Tiffany headed up to the Feegle mound to see the kelda.

Amber was sitting outside when Tiffany arrived, doing some sewing in the sunlight.

‘Hello, miss,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’ll just go and tell Mrs Kelda that you’re here.’ And with that she disappeared down the hole as easily as a snake, just as Tiffany had once been able to do.

Why had Amber gone back there? Tiffany wondered. She had taken her to the Aching farm to be safe. Why had the girl walked up the Chalk to the mound? How had she even remembered where it was?

‘Very interesting child, that,’ said a voice, and the Toad 12stuck his head out from under a leaf. ‘I must say you look extremely flustered, miss.’

‘The old Baron is dead,’ said Tiffany.

‘Well, only to be expected. Long live the Baron,’ said the Toad.

‘He’s not going to live long,’ said Tiffany. ‘He’s dead.’

‘No,’ croaked the Toad. ‘It’s what you’re supposed to say. When a king dies, you have to immediately announce that there is another king. It’s important. I wonder what the new one will be like. Rob Anybody says that he’s a wet nelly who is not fit to lick your boots. And has scorned you very badly.’

Whatever the circumstances of the past, Tiffany was not going to let that go by unchallenged. ‘I don’t need anybody to lick anything for me, thank you very much. Anyway,’ she added, ‘he’s not their baron, is he? The Feegles pride themselves on not having a lord.’

‘You are correct in your submission,’ said the Toad ponderously, ‘but you must remember that they also pride themselves on having as much as possible to drink at the slightest possible excuse, which leaves them of an uncertain temper, and that the Baron quite definitely believes that he is, de facto , the owner of all the property hereabouts. A claim that stands up in law. Although I am sorry to say that I can no longer do the same. But the girl, now, she is something strange. Haven’t you noticed?’

Haven’t I noticed? Tiffany thought quickly. What should I have noticed? Amber was just a kid; 13she had seen her around – not so quiet as to be worrying, not so noisy as to be annoying. And that was it. But then she thought, The chickens. That was strange.

‘She can speak Feegle!’ said the Toad. ‘And I don’t mean all that crivens business; that’s just the patois. I mean the serious old-fashioned stuff that the kelda speaks, the language they spoke from wherever it was they came from before they came from there. I am sorry, with preparation I am sure I could have made a better sentence.’ He paused. ‘I don’t understand a word of Feegle myself, but the girl seems to have just picked it up. And another thing, I’ll swear she’s been trying to talk to me in Toad. I’m not much good at it myself, but a little bit of understanding did come with the … shape change, as it were.’

‘Are you saying that she understands unusual words?’ said Tiffany.

‘I’m not certain,’ said the Toad. ‘I think she understands meaning.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Tiffany. ‘I’ve always thought she was a bit simple.’

‘Simple?’ said the Toad, who seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘Well, as a lawyer I can tell you that something that looks very simple indeed can be incredibly complicated, especially if I’m being paid by the hour. The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.’

Amber poked her head out of the hole. ‘Mrs Kelda says to meet her in the chalk pit,’ she said excitedly.

There was a faint cheering coming from the chalk pit as Tiffany lowered herself gingerly through the careful camouflage.

She liked the pit. It seemed impossible to be truly unhappy there, with the damp white walls cradling her and the light of the blue day pricking through the briars. Sometimes, when she was much younger, she had seen the ancient fish swimming in and out of the chalk pit, ancient fish from the time when the Chalk was the land under the waves. The water had gone long ago, but the souls of the ghost fish hadn’t noticed. They were as armoured as knights and ancient as the chalk. But she didn’t see them any more. Perhaps your eyesight changes as you get older, she thought.

There was a strong smell of garlic. A large part of the bottom of the pit was full of snails. Feegles were walking carefully among them, painting numbers on their shells. Amber was sitting next to the kelda, with her hands clasped round her knees. Seen from above, it looked for all the world like a sheepdog trials, but with less barking and a lot more stickiness.

The kelda spotted Tiffany, and raised a tiny finger to her lips, followed by a brief nod at Amber, who was now engrossed in the proceedings. Jeannie patted the space on the other side of her, and said, ‘We are watching the lads putting our brand on the livestock, ye ken.’ There was a slight touch of strangeness to her voice. It was the kind of voice a grown-up uses when it tells a child ‘We are having fun, aren’t we ?’, in case the child hasn’t reached that conclusion yet. But Amber really did look as if she was enjoying herself. It occurred to Tiffany that being around the Feegles seemed to make Amber happy.

She got the impression that the kelda wanted to keep the conversation light, so she simply asked, ‘Why mark them? Who’s going to try to steal them?’

‘Other Feegles, of course. My Rob reckons they will be queuing up to steal our snails while they are left unprotected, ye ken.’

Tiffany was mystified. ‘Why would they be unprotected?’

‘Because my lads, ye ken, will be away stealing their livestock. It’s an old Feegle tradition, it means everyone gets in lots of fighting, rustling and stealing and, of course, the all-time favourite, boozing.’ The kelda winked at Tiffany. ‘Well, it keeps the lads happy, and stops them fretting and getting under our feet, ye ken.’

She winked at Tiffany again and patted Amber on the leg, and said something to her in the language that sounded like a very old version of Feegle. Amber answered in the same language. The kelda nodded meaningfully at Tiffany and pointed to the other end of the pit.

‘What did you just say to her?’ said Tiffany, looking back at the girl, who was still watching the Feegles with the same smiling interest.

‘I told her that you and I were going to have a conversation for grown-ups,’ said the kelda, ‘and she just said the boys were very funny, and I don’t know how, but she has picked up the Mother of Tongues. Tiffany, I only use it to a daughter and the gonnagle, 14ye ken, and I was talking to him on the mound last night when she joined in! She picked it up just by listening! That shouldn’t happen! That’s a rare gift she has, and no mistake. She must ken the meanings in her head, and that’s magic, missy, it’s the pure quill and no mistake.’