I Shall Wear Midnight (29 page)

Tiffany fixed him with a helpful smile, which made him nervous. ‘Anything else, my lord? I am anxious that everything should be dealt with.’

‘Roland, she is up to something,’ said the Duchess. ‘Be on your guard.’ She waved a hand towards the guards. ‘And you guards should be on your guard as well, mind!’

The guards, having some difficulty with the idea of being even more on their guard when they were already – through nervousness – much further on their guard in any case than they had ever been before, strained to look a bit taller.

Roland cleared his throat. ‘Ahem, then there is the matter of the late cook, who fell to her death almost coincidentally with, I believe, insulting you. Do you understand these charges?’

‘No,’ said Tiffany.

There was a moment of silence before Roland said, ‘Er, why not?’

‘Because they aren’t charges, my lord. You are not declaring outright that you think I stole the money and killed your father and the cook. You are simply sort of waving the idea in front of me in the hope that I will burst into tears, I suppose. Witches don’t cry, and I want something that probably no other witch has ever asked for before. I want a hearing. A proper hearing. And that means
evidence. And that means witnesses, and that means that the people who
say
have to say it in front of everybody. And that means a jury of my peers, which means people like me, and that means
habeas corpus
, thank you very much.’ She stood up and turned towards the doorway, which was blocked by a struggling crowd of guards. Now she looked at Roland, and bobbed a little curtsy. ‘Unless you feel
entirely
confident enough to have me arrested, my lord, I am leaving.’

They watched with open mouths as she walked up to the guards.

‘Good evening, Sergeant, good evening, Preston, good evening, gentlemen. This won’t take a minute. If you would just excuse me, I am leaving.’ She saw Preston wink at her as she pushed past his sword, and then she heard the guards suddenly collapse in a heap.

She walked along the corridor to the hall. There was a huge fire in the even bigger fireplace, which was large enough to be a room all by itself. The fire was peat. It couldn’t do much to heat most of the hall, which never got warm even in the heart of summer, but it was cosy to be close to, and if you have to breathe smoke, then you can’t do better than peat smoke, which rose up to the chimney and drifted like a warm mist around the sides of bacon, which were hung up there to smoke.

It was all going to get complicated again, but for the moment Tiffany sat there simply for a rest and, while she was about it, to shout at herself for being so stupid. How much poison can he seep into their heads? How much does he
need
to?

That was the problem with witchcraft: it was as if everybody needed the witches, but hated the fact that they did, and somehow the hatred of the fact could become the hatred of the person. People then started thinking: Who are you to have these skills? Who are you to know these things? Who are you to think you’re better than us? But Tiffany
didn’t
think she was better than them. She was better than them at witchcraft, that was true, but she couldn’t knit a sock,
she didn’t know how to shoe a horse, and while she was pretty good at making cheese, she had to have three tries to bake a loaf that you could actually bite into with your teeth. Everybody was good at something. The only wicked thing was not finding out in time.

There was fine dust on the floor of the fireplace, because there is nothing like peat for dust, and as Tiffany watched, tiny little footprints appeared in it.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘what did you do to the guards?’

A shower of Feegles landed lightly on the seat beside her.

‘Weel,’ Rob Anybody said, ‘personally I would have liked to take them to the cleaners, the mound-digging Cromwells that they are, but I could see where that might make it a wee bit difficult for ye, so we just tied their bootlaces together. Maybe they’ll blame it on the wee mice.’

‘Look, you’re not to hurt anybody, all right? The guards have to do what they are told.’

‘Nae, they didnae,’ said Rob scornfully. ‘That’s nae errand for a warrior, doing what you’re told. And what would they have done to ye, doing what they were told? That old carlin of a mother-in-law was glaring claymores at ye the whole time, bad cess to her! Hah! Let’s see how she likes her bathwater tonight!’

The edge to his voice put Tiffany on the alert. ‘You are not to hurt anybody, do you understand? Nobody at all, Rob.’

The Big Man grumbled. ‘Och yes, miss, I’ve taken what you said on board!’

‘And you promise on your honour as a Feegle not to throw it over the side as soon as my back is turned, do you?’

Rob Anybody started grumbling again, using crackling Feegle words that she had never heard before. They sounded like curses, and once or twice, when he spat them out, smoke and sparks came out with them. He was stamping his feet too, always a sign of a Feegle at the end of his tether. ‘They came arrayed with sharp steel
to dig up me home, dig up me clan and dig up me family,’ he said, and his words were all the more menacing because they were so level and quiet. Then he spat a short sentence towards the fire, which burned green for a moment when the words hit the flames.

‘I’ll no’ disobey the hag o’ the hills, ye ken, but I put ye on firm notice that if I can see a shovel near my mound again, the owner will find it shoved up his kilt blunt end first, so that he hurts his hands trying to pull it out. And that will only be the start of his problems! And if there is any clearances here, I swear on my spog that it will be us that is doing the clearing!’ He stamped up and down a bit, and then added: ‘And what is this we are hearing about ye demanding the law? We is nae friends of the law, ye ken.’

‘What about Wee Mad Arthur?’ said Tiffany.

It was almost impossible to make a Feegle look sheepish, but Rob Anybody looked as if he was about to say ‘Bah’. ‘Oh, it’s a terrible thing them gnomes did to him,’ he said, looking sad. ‘Do ye ken he washes his face every day? I mean, that sort of thing is OK when the mud gets too thick, but every day? I ask ye, how can a body stand it?’

One moment there were the Feegles, and then there was a faint
whoosh
, followed by a total lack of Feegles, and the next moment there was a more than adequate supply of guards. Fortunately they were the sergeant and Preston, stamping to attention.

The sergeant cleared his throat. ‘Am I addressing Miss Tiffany Aching?’ he said.

‘It looks to me as if you are, Brian,’ said Tiffany, ‘but you be the judge.’

The sergeant looked around quickly and then leaned closer. ‘Please, Tiff,’ he whispered, ‘it’s all gone serious on us.’ He straightened up quickly and then said, far louder than was necessary, ‘Miss Tiffany Aching! I am commanded by my lord the Baron to inform you that it is his command that you must stay within the irons of the castle—’

‘The what?’ said Tiffany.

Wordlessly, his eyes on the ceiling, the sergeant handed her a piece of parchment.

‘Oh, you mean the
environs
,’ she said. ‘That means the castle and the places around it too,’ she told him helpfully. ‘But I thought the Baron wanted me to leave?’

‘Look, I’m just reading out what it says here, Tiff, and I am ordered to lock your broomstick in the dungeon.’

‘That’s an impressive errand that you have there, Officer. It’s leaning against the wall, help yourself.’

The sergeant looked relieved. ‘You’re not going to make any … trouble?’ he said.

Tiffany shook her head. ‘Not at all, Sergeant. I have no quarrel with a man who is only doing his duty.’

The sergeant walked cautiously up to the broomstick. They all knew it, of course; they had seen it going overhead, and generally only
just
overhead, practically every day. But he hesitated, with his hand a few inches from the wood. ‘Er, what happens when I touch it?’ he said.

‘Oh, then it’s ready to fly,’ said Tiffany.

The sergeant’s hand very slowly drew back from the vicinity, or possibly the environs, of the broomstick. ‘But it won’t fly for me, right?’ he said in a voice full of air-sickness and pleading.

‘Oh, not very far or very high, probably,’ said Tiffany, without looking round. The sergeant was well known to get vertigo simply by standing on a chair. She walked over to him and picked up the stick. ‘Brian, what were your orders if I refused to obey your orders, if you see what I mean?’

‘I was supposed to arrest you!’

‘What? And lock me up in the dungeon?’

The sergeant winced. ‘You know I wouldn’t want to do that,’ he said. ‘
Some
of us are grateful, and we all knew that poor old Mrs Coble was as drunk as a skunk, poor woman.’

‘Then I won’t put you to the trouble,’ said Tiffany. ‘So why don’t I put this broomstick, which you seem so worried about, down in the dungeon and lock it in. Then I won’t be going anywhere, yes?’

Relief flooded the sergeant’s face, and as they walked down the stone steps to the dungeon he lowered his voice and said, ‘It’s not me, you understand, it’s them upstairs. It seems like her grace is calling the shots now.’

Tiffany hadn’t seen very many dungeons, but people said that the one in the castle was pretty good by dungeon standards and would probably earn at least five ball and chains if anybody ever decided to write a Good Dungeon Guide. It was spacious and well-drained, with a handy gutter right down the middle, which ended up in the inevitable round hole, which did not smell very bad on, as it were, the whole.

Neither did the goats, which unfolded themselves from their snug beds in piles of straw and watched her through slot eyes in case she did anything interesting, such as feeding them. They didn’t stop eating, because being goats, they were already eating their dinner for the second time.

The dungeon had two entrances. One went straight outdoors: it was probably there to drag the prisoners in by, back in the old days, because that would save having to pull them across the great hall, getting the floor all mucky with blood and mud.

These days the dungeon was mostly used as a goat shed and, on racks higher up – high enough to be out of reach of all but the most determined goat – an apple store.

Tiffany lifted the broomstick up onto the lowest apple rack, while the sergeant petted one of the goats, taking care not to look up in case it made him feel dizzy. That meant he was entirely unprepared when Tiffany pushed him back out of the doorway, took the keys out of the lock, swung herself back into the dungeon and locked the door on the inside.

‘I’m sorry, Brian, but, you see, it is you. Not just you, of course, and not even mostly you, and it was rather unfair of me to take advantage of you, but if I’m going to be treated like a criminal, I might as well act like one.’

Brian shook his head. ‘We do have another key, you know.’

‘Hard to use it if I blocked the keyhole,’ said Tiffany, ‘but look on the bright side. I’m under lock and key, which I think some people would rather like, so all you are worried about is the fine detail. You see, I think you might be looking at this the wrong way round. I’m safe in a dungeon. I haven’t been locked away from you, the rest of you have been locked away from me.’ Brian looked as if he was about to cry and she thought, No, I can’t do it. He’s always been decent to me. He’s trying to be decent now. Just because I’m cleverer than he is doesn’t mean that he should lose his job. And besides, I already know the way out of here. That’s the thing about people who have dungeons; they don’t spend enough time in them themselves. She handed the keys back.

His face brightened with relief. ‘Obviously we will bring you food and water,’ he said. ‘You can’t live on apples all the time!’

Tiffany sat down on the straw. ‘You know, it’s quite cosy in here. It’s funny how goat burps make everything sort of warm and comfortable. No, I won’t eat the apples, but some of them do need turning or else they will rot, so I will take care of that while I’m in here too. Of course, when I’m locked in here I can’t be out there. I can’t make medicines. I can’t clip toenails. I can’t help. How is your old mum’s leg these days? Still well, I hope? Would you mind leaving now, please, because I’d like to use the hole.’

She heard his boots on the stairs. It had been a bit cruel, but what else could she have done? She looked around and lifted up a pile of very old and very dirty straw that hadn’t been touched for a long time. All sorts of things crawled, hopped or slithered away. Around
her, now that the coast was clear, Feegle heads rose, bits of straw dropping off them.

‘Fetch my lawyer, please,’ Tiffany said brightly. ‘I think he’s going to like working here …’

The Toad turned out to be quite enthusiastic, for a lawyer who knew that he was going to be paid in beetles.

‘I think we will start with wrongful imprisonment. Judges don’t like that sort of thing. If anyone’s going to be put in prison, they like to be the ones who do it.’

‘Er, actually I locked
myself
in,’ said Tiffany. ‘Does that count?’

‘I wouldn’t worry about that at the moment. You were under duress, your freedom of movement was being curtailed and you were put in fear.’

‘I certainly was not! I was extremely
angry
!’

The Toad slapped a claw down on an escaping centipede. ‘You were interrogated by two members of the aristocracy in the presence of four armed men, yes? Nobody warned you? Nobody read you your rights? And you say the Baron apparently believes on no evidence that you killed his father, and the cook, and stole some money?’