《I SHALL WEAR MIDNIGHT》vernon

5、THE MOTHER OF TONGUES

　　THERE SHOULD HAVE been a moment of peace; in fact there was a moment of metal. Some of the castle guard were approaching, their armour making even more noise than armour usually does because none of it fitted properly. There hadn’t been any battles here for hundreds of years, but they still wore armour, because it seldom needed mending and didn’t wear out.
　　The door was pushed open by Brian, the sergeant. He wore a complicated expression. It was the expression of a man who has just been told that an evil witch, whom he has known since

　　she was a kid, has killed the boss, and the boss’s son is away, and the witch is still in the room, and a nurse, whom he does not like very much, is prodding him in the bottom and shouting,
　　‘What are you waiting for, man? Do your duty!’
　　All this was getting on his nerves.
　　He gave Tiffany a sheepish look. ‘Morning, miss, is everything all right?’ Then he stared at the Baron in his chair. ‘He’s dead then, is he?’
　　Tiffany said, ‘Yes, Brian, he is. He died only a couple of minutes ago, and I have reason to believe that he was happy.’
　　‘Well, that’s good then, I suppose,’ said the sergeant, and then his face twisted into tears so that the next words were gulped and damp. ‘You know, he was really very good to us when my nan was ill; he had hot meals sent over to her every day, right up until the end.’
　　She held his unprotesting hand and looked over his shoulder. The other guards were crying too, and crying all the more because they knew they were big strong men, or so they hoped, and shouldn’t cry at all. But the Baron had always been there, part of life, like the sunrise. All right, maybe he’d give you a dressing-down if you were asleep on duty or had a blunt sword (despite the fact that no guard in living memory had needed to use his sword for anything more than levering the lid off a tin of jam), but when all was said and done, he was the Baron and they were his men and now he was gone.
　　‘Ask her about the poker!’ screamed the nurse behind Brian. ‘Go on, ask her about the money!’
　　The nurse could not see Brian’s face. Tiffany could. He had probably been prodded in the bottom again, and was suddenly livid.
　　‘Sorry, Tiff … I mean, miss, but this lady here says she thinks you done a murder and a robbery,’ he said, and his face added that its owner right now was not thinking the same thing and didn’t want to get into trouble with anyone, especially Tiffany.
　　Tiffany rewarded him with a little smile. Always remember you are a witch, she told herself. Don’t start shouting your innocence. You know you are innocent. You don’t have to shout anything. ‘The Baron was kind enough to give me some money for … looking after him,’ she said, ‘and I suppose Miss Spruce must have inadvertently heard him doing so and formed a wrong impression.’
　　‘It was a lot of money!’ Miss Spruce insisted, red in the face. ‘The big chest under the
　　Baron’s bed was open!’
　　‘All that is true,’ said Tiffany, ‘and it would appear that Miss Spruce was accidentally hearing for quite some time.’
　　Some of the guards sniggered, which made Miss Spruce even more angry, if that were possible. She pushed her way forward.
　　‘Do you deny that you were standing there with a poker and your hand on fire?’ she demanded, her face as red as a turkey.
　　‘I would like to say something, please,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s rather important.’ She could feel the impatient pain now, fighting to get free. Her hands felt clammy.
　　‘You were doing black magic, admit it!’
　　Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know what that is,’ she said, ‘but I know I am holding just above my shoulder the last pain that the Baron will ever know, and I have to get rid of it soon, and I can’t get rid of it in here, what with all these people. Please? I need an open space right now!’ She pushed Miss Spruce out of the way and the guards swiftly stood aside for her, to the nurse’s extreme annoyance.

　　‘Don’t let her go! She will fly away! That’s what they do!’
　　Tiffany knew the layout of the castle very well; everybody did. There was a courtyard down some steps, and she headed there rapidly, feeling the pain stirring and unfolding. You had to think of it as a kind of animal that you could keep at bay, but that only worked for so long. About as long as … well, now, in fact.
　　The sergeant appeared beside her, and she grabbed his arm. ‘Don’t ask me why,’ she managed to say through gritted teeth, ‘but throw your helmet in the air!’
　　He was bright enough to follow orders, and spun the helmet into the air like a soup plate. Tiffany hurled the pain after it, feeling its dreadful silkiness as it found its freedom. The helmet stopped in midair as if it had hit an invisible wall, and dropped onto the cobblestones in a cloud of steam and bent almost in half.
　　The sergeant picked it up and immediately dropped it again. ‘It’s bloody hot!’ He stared at Tiffany, who was leaning against the wall and trying to catch her breath. ‘And you’ve been taking away pain like that every day?’
　　She opened her eyes. ‘Yes, but I normally get plenty of time to find somewhere to dump it. Water and rock aren’t very good, but metal is quite reliable. Don’t ask me why. If I try to think about how it works, it doesn’t work.’
　　‘And I’ve heard that you can do all kinds of tricks with fire too?’ said Sergeant Brian
　　admiringly.
　　‘Fire is easy to work with if you keep your mind clear, but pain … pain fights back. Pain is alive. Pain is the enemy.’
　　The sergeant gingerly attempted to reclaim his helmet, hoping that by now it was cool enough to hold. ‘I will have to make certain I knock the dent out of it before the boss sees it,’ he began. ‘You know what a stickler he is for smartness … Oh.’ He stared down at the ground.
　　‘Yes,’ said Tiffany, as kindly as she could. ‘It’s going to take a bit of getting used to, isn’t it?’ Wordlessly, she handed him her hand-kerchief, and he blew his nose.
　　‘But you can take away pain,’ he began, ‘so does that mean you can …?’
　　Tiffany held up a hand. ‘Stop right there,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re going to ask, and the answer is no. If you chopped your hand off I could probably make you forget about it until you tried to eat your dinner, but things like loss, grief and sadness? I can’t do that. I wouldn’t dare meddle with them. There is something called “the soothings”, and I know only one person
　　in the world who can do that, and I’m not even going to ask her to teach me. It’s too deep.’
　　‘Tiff …’ Brian hesitated and looked around as though he expected the nurse to appear and prod him from behind again.
　　Tiffany waited. Please don’t ask, she thought. You’ve known me all your life. You can’t possibly think …
　　Brian looked at her pleadingly. ‘Did you … take anything?’ His voice tailed off.
　　‘No, of course not,’ Tiffany said. ‘What maggot’s got into your head? How could you think such a thing?’
　　‘Dunno,’ said Brian, flushing with embarrassment.
　　‘Well, that’s all right then.’
　　‘I suppose I had better make sure the young master knows,’ said Brian after another good nose-blow, ‘but all I know is that he’s gone to the big city with his—’ He stopped again, embarrassed.
　　‘With his fiancée,’ said Tiffany determinedly. ‘You can say it out loud,you know.’ Brian coughed. ‘Well,you see, we thought … well, we all thought that you and him

　　were, well,you know …’
　　‘We have always been friends,’ said Tiffany, ‘and that’s all there is to it.’
　　She felt sorry for Brian, even though he too often opened his mouth before he got it attached to his brain, so she patted him on the shoulder. ‘Look, why don’t I fly down to the big city and find him?’
　　He almost melted with relief. ‘Would you do that?’
　　‘Of course. I can see you have a lot to do here, and it will take a load off your mind.’ Admittedly it will put the load on mine, she thought as she hurried away through the
　　castle. The news had spread. People were standing around, crying or just looking bewildered. The cook ran up to her just as she was leaving. ‘What am I to do? I’ve got the poor soul’s dinner on the stove!’
　　‘Then take it off and give it to someone who needs a good dinner,’ said Tiffany briskly. It was important to keep her tone cool and busy. The people were in shock. She would be too,
　　when she had the time, but right at this moment it was important to bounce people back into the world of the here and now.
　　‘Listen to me, all of you,’ and her voice echoed around the big hall. ‘Yes,your baron is dead but you still have a baron! He will be here soon with his … lady, and you must have this place spotless for them! You all know your jobs! Get on with them! And remember him kindly and clean the place up for his sake.’
　　It worked. It always did. A voice that sounded as if its owner knew what she was doing could get things done, especially if its owner was wearing a pointy black hat. There was a sudden rush of activity.
　　‘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 byyour 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. 11 Well 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 Toad12 stuck his head out from under a leaf. ‘I must sayyou 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;13 she 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,14 ye 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.’
　　‘How could it happen?’
　　‘Who knows?’ said the kelda. ‘It’s a gift. And if ye take my advice,ye will set this girl to training.’
　　‘Isn’t she a bit too old to be starting?’ said Tiffany.
　　‘Put her to the craft, or find some channel for her gift. Believe me, my girl, I wouldnae want ye to believe that beating a girl nigh on to death is a good thing, but who kens how our paths are chosen? And so she ended up here, with me. She has the gift of understandin’. Would she have found it else? Ye know full well that the meaning of life is to find your gift. To find your gift is happiness. Never tae find it is misery. Ye said she’s a bit simple: find her a teacher
　　who can bring out the complicated in her. The girl learned a difficult language just by listening to it. The world sore needs folk that can do that.’
　　It made sense. Everything the kelda said made sense.
　　Jeannie paused and then said, ‘I am very sorry the Baron is dead.’
　　‘I’m sorry,’ Tiffany said. ‘I meant to tell you.’

　　The kelda smiled at her. ‘Do you think a kelda would need to be told something like that, my girl? He was a decent man, and ye did right by him.’
　　‘I’ve got to go and find the new Baron,’ said Tiffany. ‘And I’ll need the boys to help me find him. There’s thousands of people in the city, and the lads are very good at finding things.’15
　　She glanced up at the sky. Tiffany had never flown all the way to the big city before and didn’t much fancy flying there in the darkness. ‘I shall leave at first light. But first of all, Jeannie, I think I’d better take Amber back home. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Amber,’ she said hopelessly …
　　Three quarters of an hour later, Tiffany flew her stick back down towards the village, the screams still ringing in her head. Amber wasn’t going back. She had, in fact, made her reluctance to leave the mound abundantly clear by bracing her arms and legs in the hole and staying there screaming at the top of her voice every time Tiffany gave a gentle pull; when she let go, the girl went back to sit next to the kelda. So that was that. You try to make plans for people, and the people make other plans.
　　However you looked at it, Amber had parents; pretty awful parents,you might say, and you might add that that was giving them the best of it. At least they had to know that she was safe … And in any case, what possible harm could come to Amber in the care of the kelda?
　　Mrs Petty slammed the door shut when she saw that it was Tiffany on the step, then
　　opened it again almost immediately, in a flood of tears. The place stank, not just of stale beer and bad cooking but also of helplessness and bewilderment. A cat, the mangiest that Tiffany had ever seen, was almost certainly another part of the problem.
　　Mrs Petty was frightened out of whatever wits she had and dropped to her knees on the floor, pleading incoherently. Tiffany made her a cup of tea, which was no errand for the squeamish, given that such crockery as the cottage possessed was piled up in the stone sink, which was otherwise filled with slimy water that occasionally bubbled. Tiffany spent several minutes of heavy scrubbing before she had a cup she’d care to drink from, and even then something was rattling inside the kettle.
　　Mrs Petty sat on the one chair that had all four legs and babbled about how her husband was really a good man provided his dinner was on time and Amber wasn’t naughty. Tiffany had grown used to that sort of desperate conversation when she was ‘going round the houses’ up in the mountains. They were generated by fear – fear of what would happen to the speaker when they were left alone again. Granny Weatherwax had a way of dealing with this, which was to put the fear of Granny Weatherwax into absolutely everyone, but Granny Weatherwax had had years of being, well, Granny Weatherwax.
　　Careful non-aggressive questioning brought news that Mr Petty was asleep upstairs, and Tiffany simply told Mrs Petty that Amber was being looked after by a very kind lady while she healed. Mrs Petty started to cry again. The misery of the place was getting on Tiffany’s nerves too, and she tried to stop herself being cruel; but how hard was it to slosh a bucket of cold water over a stone floor and swoosh it out of the door with a broom? How hard was it to make some soap? You could make quite a serviceable one out of wood ash and animal fat. And, as her mother had said once, ‘No one is too poor to wash a window,’ although her father, just to annoy her mother, occasionally changed it to, ‘No one is too poor to wash a widow.’ But where could you start with this family? And whatever it was that was in the kettle was still rattling, presumably trying to get out.
　　Most of the women in the villages had grown up to be tough. You needed to be tough to bring up a family on a farm labourer’s wages. There was a local saying, a sort of recipe for

　　dealing with a trouble-some husband. It was: ‘Tongue pie, cold barn and the copper stick.’ It meant that a troublesome husband got a nagging instead of his dinner, he would be shoved out to the barn to sleep, and if he raised his hand to his wife, he might get a good wallop from the long stick every cottage had for stirring the washing in the wash-tub. They usually learned the error of their ways before the rough music played.
　　‘Wouldn’t you like a short holiday away from Mr Petty?’ Tiffany suggested.
　　The woman, pale as a slug and skinny as a broom, looked horrified. ‘Oh no!’ she gasped.
　　‘He wouldn’t know what to do without me!’
　　And then … it all went wrong, or rather, a lot more wrong than it was already. And it was all so innocent, because the woman was so downcast. ‘Well, at least I can clean your kitchen for you,’ Tiffany said cheerfully. It would have been fine if she had simply grabbed a broom and got to work but, oh no, she had to go and look up at the grey, cobweb-filled ceiling and say, ‘All right, I know you’re here,you always follow me, so make yourself useful and clean this kitchen thoroughly!’ Nothing happened for a few seconds, and then she heard, because she was listening for it, a muffled conversation from up near the ceiling.
　　‘Did ye no’ hear that? She kens we is here! How come she always gets it right?’
　　A slightly different Feegle voice said, ‘It’s because we always follow her,ye wee dafty!’
　　‘Oh aye, I ken that well enough, but my point is, did we not promise faithfully not to follow her around any more?’
　　‘Aye, it was a solemn oath.’
　　‘Exactly, and so I cannae but be a wee bit disappointed that the big wee hag will nae take heed of a solemn promise. It’s a wee bit hurtful to the feelings.’
　　‘But we have broken the solemn oath; it’s a Feegle thing.’
　　A third voice said, ‘Look lively,ye scunners, it’s the tapping o’ the feets!’
　　A whirlwind hit the grubby little kitchen.16 Foaming water swirled across Tiffany’s boots, which had indeed been tapping. It has to be said that no one could create a mess more quickly than a party of Feegles, but strangely, they could clean one up as well, without even the help of bluebirds and miscellaneous woodland creatures.
　　The sink emptied in an instant and filled again with soap suds. Wooden plates and tin mugs hummed through the air as the fire burst into life. With a bang bang bang the log box
　　filled. After that, things speeded up, and a fork shuddered in the wall beside Tiffany’s ear. Steam rose like a fog, with strange noises coming out of it; the sunlight flooded in through the suddenly clean window, filling the room with rainbows; a broom shot past pushing the last of the water in front of it; the kettle boiled; a vase of flowers appeared on the table – some of them, admittedly, upside down – and suddenly the room was fresh and clean and no longer smelled of rotted potatoes.
　　Tiffany looked up at the ceiling. The cat was holding onto it by all four paws. It gave her what was definitely a look. Even a witch can be out-looked by a cat that has had it up to here, and is still up here.
　　Tiffany finally located Mrs Petty under the table, with her hands over her head. When she had finally been persuaded to come out and sit down on a nice clean chair in front of a cup of tea from a wonderfully clean mug, she was very keen to agree that there had been a great improvement, although later on Tiffany couldn’t help but admit that Mrs Petty would probably have agreed to absolutely anything if only Tiffany would go away.
　　Not a success, then, but at least the place was a whole lot cleaner and Mrs Petty was bound to be grateful when she’d had time to think about it. A snarl and a thump that Tiffany

　　heard as she was leaving the ragged garden was probably the cat, parting company with the ceiling.
　　Halfway back to the farm, carrying her broomstick over her shoulder, she thought aloud,
　　‘Perhaps that was a bit stupid.’
　　‘Dinnae fash yourself,’ said a voice. ‘If we had had the time we could have made some bread as well.’ Tiffany looked down, and there was Rob Anybody, along with half a dozen others known variously as the Nac Mac Feegle, the Wee Free Men and, sometimes, the Defendants, the Culprits, people wanted by the police to help them with their enquiries and sometimes as ‘that one, second on the left, I swear it was him.’
　　‘You keep on following me!’ she complained. ‘You always promise not to and you always do!’
　　‘Ah, but ye dinnae take into account the geas that is laid on us,ye ken. Ye are the hag o’ the hills and we must always be ready to protect ye and help ye, no matter what ye say,’ said Rob Anybody stoutly. There was a rapid shaking of heads among the other Feegles, causing a fallout of bits of pencil, rats’ teeth, last night’s dinner, interesting stones with holes in, beetles,
　　promising bits of snot tucked away for leisurely examination later, and snails.
　　‘Look,’ said Tiffany, ‘you can’t just go around helping people whether they want you to or not!’
　　Rob Anybody scratched his head, put back the snail that had fallen out and said, ‘Why not, miss? You do.’
　　‘I don’t!’ she said aloud, but inside an arrow struck her heart. I wasn’t kind to Mrs Petty, was I? she thought. Yes, it was true that the woman seemed to have the brains as well as the demeanour of a mouse, but filthy though it was, the stinking house was Mrs Petty’s house, and Tiffany had burst in with a lot of, well, not to put too fine a point on it, Nac Mac Feegles, and just messed it up, even if it was less of a mess than it had been before. I was brusque and bossy and self-righteous. My mother could have handled it better. If it comes to that, probably any other woman in the village could have handled it better, but I am the witch and I blundered in and blundered about and scared the wits out of her. Me, a slip of a girl with a pointy hat.
　　And the other thing she thought about herself was that if she didn’t actually lie down very soon, she was going to fall over. The kelda was right; she couldn’t remember when she’d last slept in a proper bed, and there was one waiting for her at the farm. And, she thought suddenly and guiltily, she still had to let her own parents know that Amber Petty was back with the
　　Feegles …
　　There’s always something, she thought, and then there’s another something on top of the something, and then there is no end to the somethings. No wonder witches were given broomsticks. Feet just couldn’t do it by themselves.
　　***
　　Her mother was tending to Tiffany’s brother Wentworth, who had a black eye.
　　‘He’s been fighting the big boys,’ her mother complained. ‘Got a black eye, didn’t we, Wentworth?’
　　‘Yes, but I did kick Billy Teller in the fork.’
　　Tiffany tried to starve a yawn. ‘What have you been fighting for, Went? I thought you were more sensible.’
　　‘They said you was a witch, Tiff,’ said Wentworth. And Tiffany’s mother turned with a strange expression on her face.
　　‘Yes, well, I am,’ said Tiffany. ‘That’s my job.’

　　‘Yeah, but I doubt you do the kind of things they said you was doing,’ said her brother. Tiffany met her mother’s gaze. ‘Were these bad things?’ she said.
　　‘Hah! That’s not the half of it,’ said Wentworth. Blood and snot covered his shirt, where
　　it had dripped from his nose.
　　‘Wentworth,you go upstairs to your room,’ Mrs Aching ordered – and probably, Tiffany thought, not even Granny Weatherwax would have been able to speak an order that was so instantly obeyed. And so full of the implicit threat of doomsday if it was not.
　　When the boots of the reluctant boy had disappeared around the staircase, Tiffany’s mother turned to her youngest daughter, folded her arms and said, ‘It’s not the first time he’s been in a fight like this.’
　　‘It’s all down to the picture books,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m trying to teach people that witches aren’t mad old women who go around putting spells on people.’
　　‘When your dad comes in, I’ll get him to go and have a word with Billy’s dad,’ said her mother. ‘Billy’s a foot taller than Wentworth but your dad … he’s two foot taller than Billy’s dad. There won’t be any fighting. You know your dad. He’s a calm man,your dad. Never seen him punch a man more than about twice, never has to. He’ll keep people calm. They’ll be calm or else. But something’s not quite right, Tiff. We’re all very proud of you,you know, what
　　you’re doing and everything, but it’s getting to people somehow. They’re saying some ridiculous
　　things. And we’re having difficulties selling the cheeses. And everybody knows you are the best at cheeses. And now, Amber Petty. You think it is right that she is running around there with … them?’
　　‘I hope so, Mum,’ said Tiffany. ‘But the girl has a very strong mind of her own and, Mum, when it comes right down to it, all I can do is the best that I can.’
　　Later that night, Tiffany, dozing in her ancient bed, could hear her parents talking very quietly in the room below. And although, of course, witches didn’t cry, she had an overwhelming urge to do so.
　　11The soil and the salt were an ancient tradition to keep ghosts away. Tiffany had never seen a ghost, so they probably worked, but in any case they worked on the minds of people, who felt better for knowing that they were there, and once you understood that,you understood quite a lot about magic.

　　12 The Toad had no other name but that of the Toad and had joined the Feegle clan some years previously, and found life in the mound much to be preferred over his former existence as a lawyer or, to be precise, as a lawyer who had got too smart in the presence of a fairy godmother. The kelda had offered several times to turn him back, but he always refused. The Feegles themselves considered him the brains of the outfit since he knew words that were longer than he was.

　　13 That was to say, from Tiffany’s point of view, that meant a couple of years younger than Tiffany.

　　14 see Glossary; page 344.

　　15 She kept to herself any thought about the fact that what they were most good at finding was things that belonged to other people. It was true, though, that the Feegles could hunt like dogs, as well as drink like fish.

　　16 Tiffany had earned the admiration of other witches by persuading the Feegles to do chores. The unfortunate fact was that Feegles would do any chore, provided it was loud, messy and flamboyant. And, if possible, included screams.