I Shall Wear Midnight (20 page)

Rob Anybody matched him grin for grin. ‘I couldnae say,’ he replied, ‘but if we have, it probably belonged tae somebody else.’

‘And what about the poor wee big lassie locked up and down in the Watch House?’ said Wee Mad Arthur.

‘Oh, she’ll bide fine till the morning,’ said Rob Anybody, as loftily as he could in the circumstances. ‘She is a hag o’ considerable resource.’

‘Ye think so? You wee scunners punched an entire pub to death! How can anyone put
that
right?’

This time Rob Anybody gave him a longer, more thoughtful look before saying, ‘Well, Mr Policeman, it seems ye are a Feegle and a copper. Well, that’s the way the world spins. But the big question for the pair of ye is: are you a sneak and a snitch?’

In the Watch House the shift was changing. Somebody came in and shyly handed Mrs Proust quite a large plate of cold meats and pickles, and a bottle of wine with two glasses. After a nervous look at Tiffany, the watchman whispered something to Mrs Proust, and in one movement she’d taken a small packet out of her pocket and shoved it into his hand. Then she came back and sat down on the straw again.

‘And I see he’s had the decency to open the bottle and let the wine breathe for a while,’ she said, and added, when she saw Tiffany’s glance, ‘Lance Constable Hopkins has a little problem that he’d rather his mother never found out about and I make a rather helpful ointment. I don’t charge him, of course. One hand washes the other, although in the case of young Hopkins I hope he scrubs it first.’

Tiffany had never drunk wine before; at home you drank small beer or small cider, which had just enough alcohol to kill off the nasty invisible tiny biting things, but not enough alcohol to make you more than a bit silly.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I never thought prison would be like this!’

‘Prison? I told you, my dear girl, this isn’t prison! If you want to know what a prison is like, visit the Tanty! That’s a dark place if you like! In here the watchmen don’t gob in your grub – at least when you’re watching, and certainly never in mine, you can be sure of that. The Tanty is a tough place; they like to think that anyone who gets put in there will think more than twice before doing anything that will get them put in there again. And they’ve tidied it up a bit these days, and not everybody who goes in comes out in a pine box, but the walls still scream silently to those with hearing. I hear them.’ She opened her snuffbox with a click. ‘And worse than the screaming is the sound of the canaries in D wing, where they lock up the men who they don’t dare hang. They bang up each one by himself in a little room, and they give him a canary as company.’ At this point Mrs Proust took a pinch of snuff, at such speed and volume that Tiffany was surprised that it didn’t come out of her ears.

The box’s lid snapped back down. ‘Those men, mark you, are not your average murderer – oh no, they killed people for a hobby, or for a god or for something to do, or because it wasn’t a very nice day. They did worse things than just murder, but murder was how it always ended. I see you haven’t touched your beef …? Oh well, if you’re quite sure …’ Mrs Proust paused with rather a large piece of heavily pickled lean beef on her knife and went on: ‘Funny thing, though, these cruel men used to look after their canaries, and cried when they died. The warders used to say it was all a sham; they said it gave them the creeps, but I’m not sure. When I was young, I used to run errands for the warders and I would look at those great heavy doors and I would listen to the little birds, and I would wonder what
it is that makes the difference between a good man and a man so bad that no hangman in the city – not even my dad, who could have a man out of his cell and stone-cold dead in seven and a quarter seconds – would dare to put a rope round his neck in case he escaped from the fires of evil and came back with a vengeance.’ Mrs Proust stopped there and shivered, as if shaking off the memories. ‘That’s life in the big city, my girl; it’s not an easy bed of sweet primroses, like in the country.’

Tiffany wasn’t very happy with being called a girl again, but that wasn’t the worst of it. ‘Sweet primroses?’ she said. ‘It wasn’t sweet primroses the other day when I had to cut down a hanged man.’ And she had to tell Mrs Proust all about Mr Petty and Amber. And about the bouquet of nettles.

‘And your dad told you about the beatings?’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Sooner or later, it’s all about the soul.’

The meal had been tasty, and the wine surprisingly strong. And the straw was a lot cleaner than you might have expected. It had been a long day, piled on top of other long days. ‘Please,’ Tiffany said, ‘can we get some sleep? My father always says that things will look better in the morning.’

There was a pause. ‘Upon reflection,’ Mrs Proust said, ‘I think your father will turn out to be wrong.’

Tiffany let the clouds of tiredness take her. She dreamed about canaries singing in the dark. And perhaps she imagined it, but she thought she woke up for a moment and saw the shadow of an old lady looking at her. It certainly wasn’t Mrs Proust, who snored something terrible. The shape was there for a moment, and then it vanished. Tiffany remembered: the world is full of omens, and you picked the ones you liked.

THE KING’S NECK

I
FFANY WAS WOKEN
by the squeak of the cell door opening. She sat up and looked around. Mrs Proust was still asleep, and snoring so hard that her nose wobbled. Correction: Mrs Proust
appeared
to be asleep. Tiffany liked her, in a wary kind of way, but could she trust her? Sometimes she seemed to almost … read her mind.

‘I don’t read minds,’ said Mrs Proust, turning over.

‘Mrs Proust!’

Mrs Proust sat up and started to pull bits of straw off her dress. ‘I
don’t
read minds,’ she said, flicking the straw onto the floor. ‘I really have keen, but not supernatural, skills which I have honed to the sharpest of edges, and don’t you forget it, please. I hope to goodness they’re going to give us a cooked breakfast.’

‘No problem there – what would ye like us to fetch for ye?’

They looked up to see the Feegles sitting on the beam overhead, and dangling their feet happily.

Tiffany sighed. ‘If I asked you what you were doing last night, would you lie to me?’

‘Absolutely not, on our honour as Feegles,’ said Rob Anybody, with his hand on where he thought his heart was.

‘Well, that seems conclusive,’ said Mrs Proust, standing up.

Tiffany shook her head and sighed again. ‘No, it’s not quite as simple as that.’ She looked up at the beam and said, ‘Rob Anybody, was the answer you gave me just then truthful? I’m asking you as the hag o’ the hills.’

‘Oh aye.’

‘And that one?’

‘Oh aye.’

‘And that one?’

‘Oh aye.’

‘And that one?’

‘Oh … well, only a tiny wee lie, ye ken, hardly a lie, just something that it wouldnae be good for ye tae know.’

Tiffany turned to Mrs Proust, who was grinning. ‘The Nac Mac Feegles feel that the truth is so precious that it shouldn’t be waved about too much,’ she said apologetically.

‘Ah, people after my own heart,’ said Mrs Proust, and then, remembering herself, she added, ‘If I had one, that is.’

There was a sound of heavy boots, which got nearer and no less heavy very quickly, and turned out to belong to a tall and skinny watchman, who touched his helmet politely to Mrs Proust and gave Tiffany a nod.

‘Good morning, ladies! My name is Constable Haddock and I have been told to tell you that you’ve been let go with a warning,’ he said. ‘Although I have to tell you that no one quite knows what to warn you about, as far as I can tell, so if I was you, I’d consider myself generally in the situation of being warned, as it were, in a general and generically non-specific way, and hopefully slightly chastened by the experience, no offence meant, I’m sure.’ He coughed, and went on, after giving Mrs Proust a nervous look, ‘And
Commander Vimes has asked me to make it clear that the individuals known jointly as the Nac Mac Feegle are to be out of this city by sunset.’

There was a chorus of complaints from the Feegles on the beam, who in Tiffany’s opinion were as good at astonished indignation as they were at drunkenness and thievery:

‘Och, ye wouldnae pick on us if we was big!’

‘It wasnae us! A big boy did it and ran awee!’

‘I wasnae there! Ye can ask them! They wasnae there either!’ And otherrr excuses o’ that ilk, ye ken.

Tiffany banged her tin plate on the bars until they subsided into silence. Then she said, ‘Excuse me, please, Constable Haddock. I’m sure they’re all very sorry about the pub—’ she began, and he waved a hand at her.

‘If you’ll take my advice, miss, you would just leave quietly and not talk to anybody about pubs.’

‘But look … we all know that they smashed up the King’s Head, and—’

The constable stopped her again. ‘I went past the King’s Head this morning,’ he said, ‘and it was very definitely not smashed up. In fact, there were crowds of people there. Everyone in the city is going to have a look at it. The King’s Head is just like it’s always been, as far as I can see, with just the one tiny little detail which is, to wit, that it is now back to front.’

‘What do you mean, “back to front”?’ said Mrs Proust.

‘I mean that it is the wrong way round,’ said the policeman patiently, ‘and when I was over there just now, you can bet they weren’t calling it the King’s
Head
any more.’

Tiffany’s forehead wrinkled. ‘So … they’re calling it the King’s
Neck
?’

Constable Haddock smiled. ‘Well, yes, I can see you are a well-brought-up young lady, miss, because most of the people out there are calling it the King’s—’

‘I cannot abide smut!’ said Mrs Proust severely.

Really? Tiffany thought. With half a shop window full of pink inflatable wossnames and other mysterious items that I didn’t get a chance to see very clearly? But I suppose it would be a strange world if we were all the same, and especially if we were all the same as Mrs Proust.

And overhead she could hear the susurration of the Nac Mac Feegles, with Daft Wullie making more noise than usual. ‘I told ye, didn’t I tell ye, I said this lot is back to front, I said, but no, ye would nae pay heed! I may be daft, but I’m no’ stupid.’

The King’s Head, or at least whatever part of the king’s anatomy it now was, was not very far away, but the witches had to push their way through the crowds when they were at least a hundred yards away, and many of the people making up the crowd were holding pint mugs in their hands. Mrs Proust and Tiffany both wore hob-nailed boots, a boon to anyone who must get through a crowd in a hurry and there, in front of them was, for want of a better word – although the Feegles would have used a different word, and indeed the Feegles would not have hesitated to use a different word – was, in fact, the King’s Back, which came as a relief. Standing in front of the back door, which was now doing the duty formerly left to the front door, and handing out mugs of beer with one hand while taking money with the other, was Mr Wilkin, the landlord. He looked like a cat on the day it rained mice.

Every now and again he managed to find time in this heroic endeavour to say a few words to a skinny but purposeful-looking lady who was writing things down in a notebook.

Mrs Proust nudged Tiffany. ‘See her? That’s Miss Cripslock of
The Times
, and over there’ – she pointed at a tall man in the uniform of the Watch – ‘see there, the man she’s talking to is Commander Vimes of the City Watch. Decent man, always looks grumpy, won’t stand
any nonsense. This is going to be interesting, because he doesn’t like kings of any sort; one of his ancestors chopped off the head of the last king we had.’

‘That’s dreadful! Did he deserve it?’

Mrs Proust hesitated for a moment, and then said, ‘Well, if it’s true about what they found in his private dungeon, then the answer is “yes” in great big letters. They put the commander’s ancestor on trial anyway, because chopping heads off kings always causes a certain amount of comment, apparently. When the man stood in the dock, all he said was, “Had the beast a hundred heads I would not have rested until I had slain every last one.” Which was taken as a guilty plea. He was hanged, and then much later they put up a statue to him, which tells you more about people than you might wish to know. His nickname was Old Stoneface, and as you can see, it runs in the family.’