《I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT》vernon

10、THE MELTING GIRL ‘MISS

　　‘MISS A CHING, I must ask you to leave the Chalk,’ said the Baron, his face wooden.
　　‘I will not!’
　　The Baron’s expression did not change. Roland could be like that, she remembered, and it was worse now, of course. The Duchess had insisted on being in his office for this interview, and had further insisted on having two of her own guards there, as well as two from the castle. That pretty much filled all the space in the study, and the two pairs of guards glared at each other in all-out professional rivalry.
　　‘It is my land, Miss Aching.’
　　‘I know I have some rights!’ said Tiffany.
　　Roland nodded like a judge. ‘That is a very important point, Miss Aching, but regrettablyyou have no rights at all. You are not a leaseholder,you are not a tenant and you own no land. In short,you have nothing on which rights are based.’ He said all this without looking up from the foolscap paper in front of him.
　　Deftly, Tiffany reached across and snatched it from his fingers, and was back in her chair before the guards could react. ‘How dare you talk like that without looking me in the eye!’ But she knew what the words meant. Her father was a tenant of the farm. He had rights. She did not.
　　‘Look,’ she said, ‘you can’t just turn me out. I’ve done nothing wrong.’
　　Roland sighed. ‘I really hoped that you would see reason, Miss Aching, but since you assert total innocence, I must spell out the following facts. Item: you admit that you took the

　　child Amber Petty away from her parents and lodged her with the fairy folk who live in holes in the ground. Did you think this was the right place for a young girl? According to my men, there seemed to be a lot of snails in the vicinity.’
　　‘Now just hold on, Roland—’
　　‘You will address my future son-in-law as “my lord”,’ snapped the Duchess.
　　‘And if I don’t, will you hit me with your stick,your grace? Will you grasp the nettle firmly?’
　　‘How dare you!’ the Duchess said, her eyes blazing. ‘Is this how you like your guests to be addressed, Roland?’
　　At least his bewilderment seemed genuine. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what is being talked about here,’ he said.
　　Tiffany pointed her finger at the Duchess, causing the Duchess’s bodyguards to reach for their weapons, thus causing the castle guards to draw theirs too, so as not to be left out. By the time swords were safely disentangled and put where they belonged, the Duchess was already launching a counter-attack. ‘You should not put up with this insubordination,young man! You are the Baron, and you have given this … this creature notice to leave your lands. She is not conducive to public order, and if she still wilfully insists on not leaving, do I need to remind you that her parents are your tenants?’
　　Tiffany was already seething because of ‘creature’, but to her surprise the young Baron shook his head and said, ‘No, I cannot punish good tenants for having a wayward daughter.’
　　‘Wayward’? That was worse than ‘creature’! How dare he …! And her thoughts ran together. He wouldn’t dare. He never had dared, not in all the time they’d known each other, all the time when she had been just Tiffany and he had been just Roland. It had been a strange relationship, mostly because it wasn’t a relationship at all. They hadn’t been drawn to one another: they had been pushed towards one another by the way the world worked. She was a witch, which meant that she was automatically different from the village kids, and he was the Baron’s son, which automatically meant he was different from the village kids.
　　And where they had gone wrong was in believing, somewhere in their minds, that because two things were different, they must therefore be alike. Slowly finding out that this wasn’t true hadn’t been nice for either of them and there had been a certain number of things that both of them wished hadn’t been said. And then it wasn’t over, because it had never begun, not really, of course. And so it was best for both of them. Of course. Certainly. Yes.
　　And in all that time he’d never been like this, never so cold, never so stupid in such a
　　meticulous kind of way that you couldn’t blame it all on the wretched Duchess, although Tiffany would have loved to. No, there were other things happening. She had to be on her guard. And there, watching them watching her, she realized how a person could be both stupid and clever.
　　She picked up her chair, placed it neatly in front of the desk, sat down on it, folded her hands and said, ‘I am very sorry, my lord.’ She turned to the Duchess, bowed her head and said,
　　‘And to you too,your grace. I temporarily forgot my place. It will not happen again. Thank you.’ The Duchess grunted. It would have been impossible for Tiffany to have thought any less
　　of her but, well, a grunt? After a climb-down like that? Humbling an uppityyoung witch
　　deserved a lot better than that – some remark so cutting that it blunted on the bone. Honestly, she might have made an effort.
　　Roland was staring at Tiffany, so nonplussed he was nearly minused. She confused him a little more by handing him the now-crumpled sheet of paper and saying, ‘Do you want to deal with the other matters, my lord?’

　　He struggled for a moment, managed to flatten the paper on the desk to his satisfaction, smoothed it out and said, ‘There is the matter of the death of my father and the theft of money from his strongbox.’
　　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 obeyyour 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 mostlyyou, 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?’
　　‘I think Roland’s trying hard not to believe it,’ said Tiffany. ‘Someone has told him a lie.’
　　‘Then we must challenge it, indeed we must. He can’t go around making allegations of murder when they can’t be substantiated. He can get into serious trouble for that!’
　　‘Oh,’ said Tiffany, ‘I don’t want any harm to come to him!’ It is hard to see when the
　　Toad is smiling, so Tiffany had to take a guess. ‘Did I say something funny?’
　　‘Not funny at all, not really, but in its way rather sad and rather droll,’ said the Toad.

　　‘Droll, in this case, meaning somewhat bittersweet. This young man is making accusations against you which could, if true, lead to you being executed in many places in this world, and yet you do not wish him to be put to any inconvenience?’
　　‘I know it’s soppy, but the Duchess is pushing him all the time, and the girl he’s going to marry is as wet as—’ She stopped. There were footfalls on the stone stairs that led from the hall to the dungeon, and they certainly did not have the heavy ring of guards’ hobnails.
　　It was Letitia, the bride-to-be, all in white and all in tears. She reached the bars of Tiffany’s cell, hung onto them, and carried on crying: not big sobs, but just an endless snivelling, nose-dripping, fumbling-in-the-sleeve-for-the-lace-hanky-that-is-already-totally-soaking-wet
　　kind of tears.
　　The girl didn’t really look at Tiffany, just sobbed in her general direction. ‘I’m so sorry! I
　　really am very sorry! What can you think of me?’
　　And there, right there, was the drawback of being a witch. Here was a person whose mere existence had led Tiffany, one evening, to wonder about that whole business of sticking pins into a wax figure. She hadn’t actually done it, because it was something that you shouldn’t do, something that witches greatly frowned on, and because it was cruel and dangerous, and above
　　all because she hadn’t been able to find any pins.
　　And now the wretched creature was in some kind of agony, so distraught that modesty and dignity were all being washed away in a rolling flood of gummy tears. How could they not wash away hatred as well? And, in truth, there had never been all that much hatred, more of a kind of miffed feeling. She’d known all along that she’d never be a lady, not without the long blonde hair. It was totally against the whole book of fairytales. She just hadn’t liked being rushed into accepting it.
　　‘I really never wanted things to happen like this!’ gulped Letitia. ‘I really am very, very sorry, I don’t know what I could’ve been thinking about!’ And so many tears, rolling down that silly, lacy dress and – oh no, there was a perfect snot balloon on a perfect nose.
　　Tiffany watched in fascinated horror as the weeping girl had a great bubbling blow and – oh no, she wasn’t going to, was she? Yes, she was. Yes. She squeezed out the dripping handkerchief onto the floor, which was already wet from the incessant crying.
　　‘Look, I’m sure things can’t be as bad as all that,’ said Tiffany, trying not to hear the ghastly blobby noises on the stone. ‘If you would only stop crying for a moment, I’m sure everything can be sorted out, whatever it is.’
　　This caused more tears and some actual, genuine, old-fashioned sobs, the kind you never
　　heard in real life – well, at least, up until now. Tiffany knew that when people cried, they said boo-hoo – or at least, that’s how it was written down in books. No one said it in real life. But Letitia did, while projectile crying all over the steps. There was something else there too, and Tiffany caught the spill words as they were well and truly spilled, and read them as, somewhat soggy, they landed in her brain.
　　She thought, Oh, really? But before she could say anything, there was a clattering on the steps again. Roland, the Duchess, and one of her guards came hurrying down, followed by Brian, who had clearly been getting very annoyed about other people’s guards clattering on his home cobbles, and so was making sure that whenever a clattering was taking place, he was fully involved.
　　Roland skidded on the damp patch, and threw his arms protectively around Letitia, who squelched and oozed slightly. The Duchess loomed over the pair of them, which left little looming space available for the guards, who had to put up with looking angrily at one another.

　　‘What have you done to her?’ Roland demanded. ‘How did you lure her down here?’ The Toad cleared his throat and Tiffany gave him an undignified nudge with her boot.
　　‘Don’t you say a word,you amphibian,’ she hissed. He might be her lawyer, but if the Duchess
　　saw a toad acting as her legal counsel, then it could only make things worse.
　　As it happens, her not seeing the Toad did make things worse, because the Duchess screamed, ‘Did you hear that? Is there no end to her insolence? She called me an amphibian.’
　　Tiffany was about to say, ‘I didn’t mean you, I meant the other amphibian,’ but stopped herself in time. She sat down, one hand shovelling straw over the Toad and turned to Roland.
　　‘Which question would you like me not to answer first?’
　　‘My men know how to make you talk!’ said the Duchess over Roland’s shoulder.
　　‘I already know how to talk, thank you,’ said Tiffany. ‘I thought that maybe she had come to gloat, but things seem to be more … afloat.’
　　‘She can’t get out, can she?’ said Roland to the sergeant.
　　The sergeant saluted smartly and said, ‘No, sir. I have the keys to both doors firmly in my pocket, sir.’ He gave a smug look to the Duchess’s guard when he said this, as if to say: Some people get asked important questions and come back with accurate and snappy answers around here, thank you so very much!
　　This was rather spoiled by the Duchess saying, ‘He twice called you “sir” instead of “my
　　lord”, Roland. You must not let the lower orders act so familiarly to you. I have told you this before.’
　　Tiffany would cheerfully have kicked Roland for not coming back sharply on that one. Brian had taught him to ride a horse, she knew, and taught him how to hold a sword and how to hunt. Perhaps he should have taught him manners too.
　　‘Excuse me,’ she said sharply. ‘Do you intend to keep me locked up for ever? I wouldn’t mind some more socks and couple of spare dresses, and, of course, some unmentionables if that is going to be the case.’
　　Possibly the mention of the word ‘unmentionables’ was what flustered the young Baron. But he rallied quite quickly and said, ‘We, er … that is to say, I, er … feel we should perhaps keep you carefully but humanely where you can do no mischief until after the wedding. You do seem to be the centre of a lot of unfortunate events recently. I’m sorry about this.’
　　Tiffany didn’t dare say anything, because it isn’t polite to burst out laughing after such a solemn and stupid sentence as that.
　　He went on, trying to smile, ‘You will be made comfortable, and of course we will take
　　the goats out, if you wish.’
　　‘I’d like you to leave them in here, if it’s all the same to you,’ said Tiffany. ‘I am beginning to enjoy the pleasure of their company. But may I ask a question?’
　　‘Yes, of course.’
　　‘This is not going to be about spinning wheels, is it?’ Tiffany asked. Well, after all, there was only one way this stupid reasoning could be taking them.
　　‘What?’ said Roland.
　　The Duchess laughed triumphantly. ‘Oh yes, it would be just like the saucy and
　　all-too-confident young madam to taunt us with her intentions! How many spinning wheels do we have in this castle, Roland?’
　　The young man looked startled. He always did when his future mother-in-law addressed him. ‘Er, I don’t really know. I think the housekeeper has one, my mother’s wheel is still in the high tower … there’s always a few around. My father likes – liked – to see people busy with

　　their hands. And … really, I don’t know.’
　　‘I shall tell the men to search the castle and destroy every single one of them!’ said the Duchess. ‘I shall call her bluff ! Surely everyone knows about spiteful witches and spinning wheels? One little prick upon the finger and we’ll all end up going to sleep for a hundred years!’
　　Letitia, who had been standing in a state of snuffle, managed to say, ‘Mother,you know you’ve never let me touch a spinning wheel.’
　　‘And you never will touch a spinning wheel, ever, Letitia, never in your life. Such things are there for the labouring classes. You are a lady. Spinning is for servants.’
　　Roland had gone red. ‘My mother used to spin,’ he said in a deliberate kind of way. ‘I
　　used to sit up in the high tower when she was using it sometimes. It was inlaid with
　　mother-of-pearl. Nobody is to touch it.’ It seemed to Tiffany, watching through the bars, that only someone with half a heart, very little kindness and no common sense at all would have said anything at this point. But the Duchess had no common sense, probably because it was, well, too common.
　　‘I insist—’ she began.
　　‘No,’ said Roland. The word wasn’t loud, but it had a quietness that was somehow louder than a shout, and undertones and overtones that would have stopped a herd of elephants in their tracks. Or, in this case, one Duchess. But she gave her son-in-law a look which promised him a hard time when she could be bothered to think of one.
　　Out of sympathy, Tiffany said, ‘Look, I only mentioned about the spinning wheels to be sarcastic. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen any more. I’m not sure that it ever did. I mean, people going to sleep for a hundred years while all the trees and plants grow up over the palace? How is that supposed to work? Why weren’t the plants sleeping as well? Otherwise you would get brambles growing up people’s nostrils, and I bet that would wake up anybody. And what happened when it snowed?’ As she said this she fixed her attention on Letitia, who was almost screaming a very interesting spill word, which Tiffany had noted for later consideration.
　　‘Well, I can see that a witch causes disruption wherever she walks,’ said the Duchess,
　　‘and so you will stay here, being treated with more decency than you deserve, until we say so.’
　　‘And what will you tell my father, Roland?’ said Tiffany sweetly.
　　He looked as if he’d been punched, and probably he would be if Mr Aching got wind of this. He’d need an awful lot of guards if Mr Aching found out that his youngest daughter had been locked up with goats.
　　‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Tiffany. ‘Why don’t we say that I am staying in the castle to deal
　　with important matters? I’m sure the sergeant here can be trusted to take a message to my dad without upsetting him?’ She made this into a question and saw Roland nod, but the Duchess couldn’t help herself.
　　‘Your father is a tenant of the Baron and will do what he is told!’
　　Now Roland was trying not to squirm. When Mr Aching had worked for the old Baron, they had, as men of the world, reached a sensible arrangement, which was that Mr Aching would do whatever the Baron asked him to do. Provided the Baron asked Mr Aching to do what Mr Aching wanted to do and needed to be done.
　　That was what loyalty meant, her father had told her one day. It meant that good men of all sorts worked well when they understood about rights and duties and the dignity of everyday people. And people treasured that dignity all the more because that was, give or take some bed linen, pots and pans and a few tools and cutlery, more or less all they had. The arrangement didn’t need to be talked about, because every sensible person knew how it worked: while you’re

　　a good master, I will be a good worker. I will be loyal to you, while you are loyal to me, and while the circle is unbroken, this is how things will continue to be.
　　And Roland was breaking the circle, or at least allowing the Duchess to do it for him. His
　　family had ruled the Chalk for a few hundred years, and had pieces of paper to prove it. There was nothing to prove when the first Aching had set foot on the Chalk; no one had invented paper then.
　　People weren’t happy about witches right now – they were upset and confused – but the last thing Roland could do with was Mr Aching seeking an answer. Even with some grey in his hair Mr Aching could ask some very hard questions. And I need to stay here now, Tiffany thought. I’ve found a thread, and what you do with threads is pull them. Aloud, she said, ‘I don’t mind staying here. I’m sure we don’t want any little problems.’
　　Roland looked relieved about this but the Duchess turned to the sergeant and said, ‘Are you sure she’s locked in?’
　　Brian stood up straight; he’d been standing up straight already, and was probably now on tiptoe. ‘Yes, m— your graceship, like I said, there’s only one key to fit both the doors, and I have them in my pocket right here.’ He slapped his right-hand pocket, which jingled. Apparently, the jingle was enough to satisfy the Duchess, who said, ‘Then I think we might rest a little happier in our beds tonight, Sergeant. Come, Roland, and do take care of Letitia. I fear she needs her medicine again – goodness knows what the wretched girl said to her.’
　　Tiffany watched them go, all except Brian, who had the decency to look embarrassed.
　　‘Could you come over here please, Sergeant?’
　　Brian sighed, and walked a little nearer to the bars. ‘You’re not going to make trouble for me, are you, Tiff?’
　　‘Certainly not, Brian, and I hope and trust that you will not try to make trouble for me.’ The sergeant shut his eyes and groaned. ‘You’re planning something, aren’t you? I knew

　　it!’

　　‘Let me put it like this,’ said Tiffany, leaning forward. ‘How likely is it, do you think,

　　that I’m going to stay in the cell tonight?’
　　Brian went to pat his pocket. ‘Well, don’t forget I’ve got the—’ It was terrible to see his face crumple up like a little puppy that’s been given a sharp telling-off. ‘You picked my pocket!’ He looked at her pleadingly, like a little puppy who was now expecting much worse than a
　　telling-off.
　　To the sergeant’s shock and awe, Tiffany handed the keys back to him again, with a smile. ‘You surely don’t think a witch needs keys? And I promise you that I will be back in here by seven o’clock in the morning. I think you will agree, in the circumstances, that this is very good deal, especially since I will find some time to change the bandage on your mother’s leg.’
　　The look on his face was enough. He grabbed the keys thankfully. ‘I suppose it’s no good me asking you how you intend to get out?’ he said hopefully.
　　‘I don’t think you ought to ask that question in the circumstances, do you, Sergeant?’
　　He hesitated, and then smiled. ‘Thank you for thinking about my mother’s leg,’ he said.
　　‘It’s looking a bit purple at the moment.’
　　Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘The trouble is, Brian,you and I are the only ones thinking about your mother’s bad leg. There’s old folks out there who need someone to help them in and out of the bathtub. There’s pills and potions that need making and taking to people in the
　　hard-to-get-to places. There is Mr Bouncer, who can hardly walk at all unless I give him a good rubbing of embrocation.’ She pulled out her diary, held together with bits of string and elastic

　　bands, and waved it at him. ‘This is full of things for me to do, because I am the witch. If I don’t do them, who will? Young Mrs Trollope is due to have twins soon, I’m sure of it, I can hear the separate heartbeats. First-time births too. She is already scared stiff, and the nearest other
　　midwife is ten miles away and, I have to say, a bit short-sighted and forgetful. You are an officer, Brian. Officers are supposed to be men of resource, so if the poor young mother comes looking for help, I am sure you will know what to do.’
　　She had the pleasure of seeing his face go very nearly white. Before he could stutter a reply she continued, ‘But I can’t help,you see, because the wicked witch must be locked up in case she gets her hands on a loaded spinning wheel! Locked up for a fairy story! And the trouble is, I think somebody might die. And if I let them die, then I am a bad witch. The trouble is, I am
　　a bad witch anyway. I must be, because you have locked me up.’
　　She did actually feel sorry for him. He hadn’t become a sergeant to deal with things like this; most of his tactical experience lay in catching escaped pigs. Should I blame him for what he’s been ordered to do? she wondered. After all,you can’t blame the hammer for what the carpenter does with it. But Brian has got a brain, and the hammer hasn’t. Maybe he should try to use it.
　　Tiffany waited until the sound of his boots indicated that the sergeant had decided quite correctly that it might be a good idea to have a plausible distance between the cell and himself that evening, and also perhaps a little think about his future. Besides, the Feegles began to appear from every crevice, and they had a wonderful instinct for not getting spotted.
　　‘You shouldn’t have pick-pocketed his keys,’ she said as Rob Anybody spat out a piece of straw.
　　‘Aye? He wants to keep you locked up!’
　　‘Well,yes, but he’s a decent person.’ She knew that sounded stupid, and Rob Anybody must have known that too.
　　‘Oh aye, sure, a decent person who will lock you up at the bidding of that snotty old carlin?’ he snarled. ‘And what about that big wee strip o’ dribbling in the white dress? I was reckoning we’d have to build guttering in front of her.’
　　‘Was she one o’ them water nymphs?’ said Daft Wullie, but the majority view was that the girl was somehow made of ice and had been melting away. Lower down the steps, a mouse was swimming to safety.
　　Almost without her knowing it, Tiffany’s left hand slid into her pocket and pulled out a piece of string, which was temporarily dropped onto Rob Anybody’s head. The hand went back into her pocket and came back out with one interesting small key she had picked up by the side of the road three weeks ago, an empty packet that had once contained flower seeds, and a small stone with a hole in it. Tiffany always picked up small stones with holes in them, because they were lucky; she kept them in her pocket until the stone wore through the cloth and fell out, leaving only the hole. That was enough to make an emergency shamble, except that you usually
　　needed something alive, of course. The Toad’s dinner of beetles had entirely disappeared, mostly into the Toad, so she picked him up and tied him gently into the pattern, paying no attention to
　　his threats of legal action.
　　‘I don’t know whyyou don’t use one of the Feegles,’ he said. ‘They like this sort of

　　thing!’

　　‘Yes, but half the time the shamble ends up pointing me to the nearest pub. Now, just

　　hang on, will you?’
　　The goats carried on chewing as she moved the shamble this way and that, searching for

　　a clue. Letitia had been sorry, deeply damply sorry. And that last set of spill words was a set of words she wasn’t brave enough to say but not quick enough to stop. They were: ‘I didn’t mean it!’
　　No one knew how a shamble worked. Everybody knew that it did. Perhaps all it did do was make you think. Maybe what it did do was give your eyes something to look at while you thought, and Tiffany thought: Someone else in this building is magical. The shamble twisted, the Toad complained and the silver thread of a conclusion floated across Tiffany’s Second Sight.
　　She turned her eyes towards the ceiling. The silver thread glittered, and she thought: Someone in this building is using magic. Someone who is very sorry that they did.
　　Was it possible that the permanently pale, permanently damp and irrevocably watercolouring Letitia was actually a witch? It seemed unthinkable. Well, there was no sense in wondering what was happening when you could simply go and find out for yourself.
　　It was nice to think that the barons of the Chalk had got along with so many people over the years that they’d forgotten how to lock anybody up. The dungeon had become a goat shed, and the difference between a dungeon and a goat shed is that you don’t need a fire in a goat shed, because goats are pretty good at keeping themselves warm. You do need one in a dungeon, however, if you want to keep your prisoners nice and warm, and if you really don’t like your prisoners then you’ll need a fire to get them nasty and warm. Terminally hot. Granny Aching had told Tiffany once that when she was a girl there had been all kinds of horrible metal things in the dungeon, mostly for taking people apart a little bit at a time, but as it turned out there was never a prisoner bad enough to use them on. And, if it came to that, no one in the castle wanted to use
　　any of the things, which often trapped your fingers if you weren’t careful, so they were all sent down to the blacksmith for turning into more sensible things like shovels and knives, except for the Iron Maiden, which had been used as a turnip clamp until the top fell off.
　　And so, because nobody in the castle had ever been very enthusiastic about the dungeon, everybody had forgotten that it had a chimney. And that is why Tiffany looked up and saw, high above her, that little patch of blue which a prisoner calls the sky, but which she, as soon as it was dark enough, intended to call the exit.
　　It turned out to be a little more tricky to use than she had hoped; it was too narrow for her to go up sitting on the stick, so she had to hang onto the bristles and let the broomstick drag her up while she fended herself off the walls with her boots.
　　At least she knew her way around up there. All the kids did. There probably wasn’t a boy growing up in the Chalk who hadn’t scratched his name in the lead on the roof, quite probably alongside the names of his father, grandfathers, great-grandfathers and even
　　great-great-grandfathers, until the names got lost in the scratches.
　　The whole point about a castle is that nobody should get in if you don’t want them to, and so there were no windows until you got nearly to the top, where the best rooms were. Roland had long ago moved into his father’s room – she knew that because she had helped him move his
　　stuff in when the old Baron had finally accepted that he was too sick to manage the stairs any longer. The Duchess would be in the big guestroom, halfway between that room and the Maiden Tower – which really was its name – where Letitia would be sleeping. No one would draw attention to this, but the arrangement meant that the bride’s mother would be sleeping in the room between the groom and the bride, possibly with her ears highly tuned at all times for any sound of hanky or even panky.
　　Tiffany crept quietly through the gloom and stepped neatly into an alcove when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. They belonged to a maid, carrying a jug on a tray, which she very

　　nearly spilled when the door to the Duchess’s room was flung open and the Duchess herself was glaring at her, just to check nothing was going on. When the maid moved on again, Tiffany followed her, silently and, as she had the trick of it, invisibly too. The guard sitting by the door looked up hopefully when the tray arrived, and was told sharply to go downstairs and get his own supper; then the maid stepped into the room, the tray was placed beside the big bed, and the maid left, wondering for a moment whether her eyes had been playing tricks on her.
　　Letitia looked as though she was sleeping under freshly fallen snow, and it rather spoiled the effect when you realized that mostly it was screwed-up tissue paper. Used tissue paper, at that. It was very rare indeed on the Chalk, because it was quite expensive, and if you had any, it was not considered bad manners to dry it out in front of the fire for re-use later on. Tiffany’s father said that when he was a little boy he had to blow his nose on mice, but this was probably said in order to make her squeal.
　　Right now, Letitia blew her nose with an unladylike honking noise and, to Tiffany’s surprise, looked suspiciously around the room. She even said, ‘Hello? Is there anybody there?’ – a question which, considered sensibly, is never going to get you anywhere.
　　Tiffany pulled herself further into a shadow. She could sometimes fool Granny
　　Weatherwax on a good day, and a soppy princess had no business sensing her presence.
　　‘I can scream,you know,’ said Letitia, looking around. ‘There’s a guard right outside my

　　door!’

　　‘Actually, he’s gone down to get his dinner,’ said Tiffany, ‘which frankly I call very

　　unprofessional. He should have waited to be relieved by another guard. Personally, I think your mother is more worried about how her guards look than about how they think. Even young Preston guards better than they do. Sometimes people never know he’s there until he taps them on the shoulder. Did you know that people very seldom start screaming while someone is still talking to them? I don’t know why. I suppose it’s because we are brought up to be polite. And if you think you’re going to do so now, I would like to point out that if I was planning to do anything nasty I would have done so already, don’t you think?’
　　The pause was rather longer than Tiffany liked. Then Letitia said, ‘You have every right to be angry. You are angry, aren’t you?’
　　‘Not at the moment. By the way, aren’t you going to drink your milk before it gets cold?’
　　‘Actually, I always tip it down the privy. I know that it’s a wicked waste of good food and that there are a lot of poor children who would love a nightcap of warm milk, but they don’t deserve mine because my mother makes the maids put a medicine in it to help me sleep.’
　　‘Why?’ said Tiffany incredulously.
　　‘She thinks I need it. I don’t, really. You have no idea what it’s like. It’s like being in prison.’
　　‘Well, I think I know what that’s like now,’ said Tiffany. The girl in the bed started to cry again, and Tiffany hushed her into silence.
　　‘I didn’t mean it to get that bad,’ said Letitia, blowing her nose like a hunting horn. ‘I just wanted Roland not to like you so much. You can’t imagine what it’s like, being me! The most I’m allowed to do is paint pictures, and only watercolours at that. Not even charcoal sketches!’
　　‘I wondered about that,’ said Tiffany absent-mindedly. ‘Roland once used to write to Lord Diver’s daughter, Iodine, and she used to paint watercolours all the time too. I wondered if it was some kind of punishment.’
　　But Letitia wasn’t listening. ‘You don’t have to just sit and paint pictures. You can fly around all the time,’ she was saying. ‘Order people about, do interesting things. Hah, I wanted to

　　be a witch when I was little. But just my luck, I had long blonde hair and a pale complexion and a very rich father. What good was that? Girls like that can’t be witches!’
　　Tiffany smiled. They were getting to the truth, and it was important to stay helpful and
　　friendly before the dam broke again and they were all flooded. ‘Did you have a book of fairy stories when you were young?’
　　Letitia blew her nose again. ‘Oh,yes.’
　　‘Was it the one with a very frightening picture of the goblin on page seven by any chance? I used to shut my eyes when I came to that page.’
　　‘I scribbled all over him with a black crayon,’ said Letitia in a low voice, as if it was a relief to tell somebody.
　　‘You didn’t like me. And so you decided to do some magic against me …’ Tiffany said it very quietly, because there was something brittle about Letitia. In fact the girl did reach for some more tissue but appeared to have run out of sobs for a moment – as it turned out, only for a moment.
　　‘I am so sorry! If only I had known, I would never have—’
　　‘Perhaps I should tell you,’ Tiffany went on, ‘that Roland and I were … well, friends. More or less the only friend the other one had. But in a way, it was the wrong kind of friendship. We didn’t come together; things happened that pushed us together. And we didn’t realize that. He was the Baron’s son, and once you know that you’re the Baron’s son and all the kids have been told how to act towards the Baron’s son, then you don’t have many people you can talk to.
　　And then there was me. I was the girl smart enough to be a witch and I have to say that this is not a job which allows you to have that much of a social life. If you like, two people who were left out thought they were the same kind of person. I know that now. Unfortunately Roland was the first to realize that. And that’s the truth of it. I am the witch, and he is the Baron. And you will be the Baroness, and you should not worry if the witch and the Baron – for the benefit of everybody
　　– are on good terms. And that is all there is to is, and in fact there isn’t even an it, just the ghost of an it.’
　　She saw relief travel across Letitia’s face like the rising sun.
　　‘And that’s the truth from me, miss, so I would like the truth from you. Look, can we get out of here? I’m afraid that some guards might rush in at any moment and try and put me in a place I can’t get out of.’
　　Tiffany managed to get Letitia onto the broomstick with her. The girl fidgeted, but simply gasped as the stick sailed down gently from the castle battlements, drifted over the village and touched down in a field.
　　‘Did you see those bats?’ said Letitia.
　　‘Oh, they often fly around the stick if you don’t move very fast,’ said Tiffany. ‘You’d think they would avoid it, really. And now, miss, now we’re both far from any help, tell me what you did that made people hate me.’
　　Panic filled Letitia’s face.
　　‘No, I’m not going to hurt you,’ said Tiffany. ‘If I was going to, I would have done it a long time ago. But I want to clean up my life. Tell me what you did.’
　　‘I used the ostrich trick,’ said Letitia promptly. ‘You know, it’s called unsympathetic magic: you make a model of the person and stick them upside down in a bucket of sand. I really am very, very sorry …’
　　‘Yes,you already said so,’ said Tiffany, ‘but I’ve never heard of this trick. I can’t see how it could work. It doesn’t make sense.’

　　But it worked on me, she thought. This girl isn’t a witch, and whatever she tried wasn’t a real spell, but it worked on me.
　　‘It doesn’t have to make sense if it’s magic,’ said Letitia hopefully.
　　‘It has to make some sense somewhere,’ said Tiffany, staring up at the stars that were coming out.
　　‘Well,’ said Letitia, ‘I got it out of Spells for Lovers by Anathema Bugloss, if that’s any

　　help.’

　　‘That’s the one with the picture of the author sitting on a broomstick, isn’t it?’ said

　　Tiffany. ‘Sitting on it the wrong way round, I might add. And it hasn’t got a safety strap. And no witch I’ve ever met wears goggles. And as for having a cat on it with you, that doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s a made-up name too. I’ve seen the book in the Boffo catalogue. It’s rubbish. It’s for soppy girls who think all you need to do to make magic is buy a very expensive stick
　　with a semiprecious stone glued on the end, no offence meant. You might as well pick a stick out of the hedge and call it a wand.’
　　Without saying anything, Letitia walked a little way down to the hedge that lay between the field and the road. There’s always a useful stick under a hedge if you poke around enough. She waved it vaguely in the air, and it left a light blue line after it.
　　‘Like this?’ she said. For quite a while, there was no sound apart from the occasional hoot
　　of an owl and, for the really good of hearing, the rustling of the bats.
　　‘I think it’s time we had a proper little chat, don’t you?’ said Tiffany.