I Shall Wear Midnight Page 10

  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.

  Chapter 6

  THE COMING OF THE CUNNING MAN

  TIFFANY WAS ANGRY at herself for oversleeping. Her mother actually had to bring her up a cup of tea. But the kelda had been right. She hadn’t been sleeping properly and the ancient but homely bed had just closed around her.

  Still, it could have been worse, she told herself as they set off. For example, there could have been snakes on the broomstick. The Feegles had been only too glad, as Rob Anybody put it, to ‘feel the wind beneath their kilts’. Feegles were probably better than snakes, but that was only a guess. They would do things like run from one side of the stick to the other to look at interesting things they were flying over, and on one occasion she glanced over her shoulder to see about ten of them hanging onto the back of the stick or, to put it more precisely, one of them was hanging onto the back of the stick and then one was hanging onto his heels and one was hanging onto his heels, and so on, all the way to the last Feegle. They were having fun, screaming with laughter, their kilts indeed flapping in the wind. Presumably the thrill of it made up for the danger and the lack of a view, or at least, of a view that anyone else would want to look at.

  One or two actually did lose their grip on the bristles, floating away and down while waving at their brothers and making Yahoo! noises and generally treating it as a big game. Feegles tended to bounce when they hit the ground, although sometimes they damaged it a little. Tiffany wasn’t worried about their journey home; undoubtedly there would be lots of dangerous creatures prepared to jump out on a little running man, but by the time he got home there would in fact be considerably fewer of them. Actually, the Feegles were – by Feegle standards – pretty well behaved on the flight, and didn’t actually set fire to the broomstick until they were about twenty miles from the city, an incident heralded by Daft Wullie saying ‘Whoops!’ very quietly, and then guiltily trying to conceal the fact that he’d set fire to the bristles by standing in front of the blaze to hide it.

  ‘You’ve set fire to the broomstick again, haven’t you, Wullie,’ Tiffany stated firmly. ‘What was it that we learned last time? We don’t light fires on the broomstick for no good reason.’

  The broomstick began to shake as Daft Wullie and his brothers tried to stamp out the flames. Tiffany searched the landscape below them for something soft and preferably wet to land on.

  But it was no use getting angry with Wullie; he lived in a Wullie-shaped world of his own. You had to try thinking diagonally.

  ‘I just wonder, Daft Wullie,’ she said as the broomstick developed a nasty rattle, ‘if, working together, we might find out why my broomstick is on fire? Do you think it might be something to do with the fact that you are holding a match in your hand?’

  The Feegle looked at the match as if he had never seen one before, and then put it behind his back and stared at his feet, which was quite brave of him in the circumstances. ‘Don’t really know, miss.’

  ‘You see,’ said Tiffany as the wind whipped around them, ‘without enough bristles I can’t steer very well, and we are losing height but still regrettably going quite fast. Perhaps you could help me with this conundrum, Wullie?’

  Daft Wullie stuck his little finger in his ear and wiggled it about as if rummaging in his own brain. Then he brightened up. ‘Should we no’ land, miss?’

  Tiffany sighed. ‘I would like to do that, Daft Wullie, but, you see, we are going quite fast and the ground is not. What we have in those circumstances is what they call a crash.’

  ‘I wasnae considering that ye should land in the dirt, miss,’ said Wullie. He pointed down, and added, ‘I was just considering that ye might like to land on that.’

  Tiffany followed the line of his pointing finger. There was a long white road below them, and on it, not too far ahead, was something oblong, moving almost as fast as the broomstick itself. She stared, listening to her brain calculating, and then said, ‘We will still have to lose some speed …’

  And that was how a smouldering broomstick carrying one terrified witch and about two dozen of the Nac Mac Feegles, holding their kilts out to slow themselves down, landed on the roof of the Lancre-to-Ankh-Morpork parcel express.

  The coach had good springs and the driver got the horses back under control quite quickly. There was silence as he climbed down from his seat, while white dust began to settle back on the road. He was a heavy-looking man who winced at every step, and in one hand he held a half-eaten cheese sandwich and in the other an unmistakable length of lead pipe. He sniffed. ‘My supervisor will have to be told. Damage to paintwork, see? Got to do a report when it’s damage to paintwork. I hate reports, never been a man what words come to with ease. Got to do it, though, when it’s damage to paintwork.’ The sandwich and, more importantly, the lead pipe disappeared back into his very large overcoat, and Tiffany was amazed at how happy she felt about that.

  ‘I really am very sorry,’ she said as the man helped her down from the coach roof.

  ‘It’s not me, you understand, it’s the paintwork. I tell them, look, I tell them there’s trolls, there’s dwarfs, huh, and you know how they drive, eyes half closed most of the time ’cause of them not liking the sun.’

  Tiffany sat still as he inspected the damag
e and then looked up at her and noticed the pointy hat.

  ‘Oh,’ he said flatly. ‘A witch. First time for everything, I suppose. Do you know what I’m carrying in here, miss?’

  What could be the worst thing? Tiffany thought. She said, ‘Eggs?’

  ‘Hah,’ said the man. ‘That we should be so lucky. It’s mirrors, miss. One mirror, in point of fact. Not a flat one, either; it’s a ball, they tell me. It’s all packed up very snug and sound, or so they say, not knowing that somebody was going to drop out of the sky on it.’ He didn’t sound angry, just worn out, as if he permanently expected the world to hand him the dirty end of the stick. ‘It was made by the dwarfs,’ he added. ‘They say it cost more than a thousand Ankh-Morpork dollars, and you know what it’s for? To hang up in a dance hall in the city, where they intend to dance the waltz, which a well-brought-up young lady such as you should not know about, on account of the fact, it says in the paper, that it leads to depravity and goings-on.’

  ‘My word!’ said Tiffany, thinking that something like this was expected of her.

  ‘Well, I suppose I’d better go and see what the damage is,’ said the driver, laboriously opening the back of the coach. A large box filled quite a lot of the space. ‘It’s mostly packed with straw,’ he said. ‘Give me a hand to get it down, will you? And if it tinkles, we’re both in trouble.’

  It turned out not to be as heavy as Tiffany expected. Nevertheless, they lowered it gently onto the road and the coachman rummaged among the straw inside, bringing out the mirror ball, holding it aloft like a rare jewel which, indeed, it resembled. It filled the world with sparkling light, dazzling the eyes and sending beams of flashing rays across the landscape. And at this point the man screamed in pain and dropped the ball, which shattered into a million pieces, filling the sky just for a moment with a million images of Tiffany, while he, curling up, landed on the road, raising more white dust and making little whimpering noises as the glass dropped around him.

  In slightly less than an instant, the moaning man was surrounded by a ring of Feegles, armed to whatever teeth they still possessed with claymores, more claymores, bludgeons, axes, clubs and at least one more claymore. Tiffany had no idea where they had been hiding; a Feegle could hide behind a hair.

  ‘Don’t hurt him,’ she shouted. ‘He wasn’t going to hurt me! He’s very ill! But make yourselves useful and tidy up all this broken glass!’ She crouched down in the road and held the man’s hand. ‘How long have you had jumping bones, sir?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been a martyr to them these past twenty years, miss, a martyr,’ the coachman moaned. ‘It’s the jolting of the coach, you see. It’s the suspenders – they don’t work! I don’t think I get more than just one decent night’s sleep in five, miss, and that’s the truth; I have a little snooze, turn over, like you do, and there’s this little click and then it’s agony, believe me.’

  Except for a few dots on the edge of sight, there was no one else around apart from, of course, for a bunch of Nac Mac Feegles who, against all common sense, had perfected the art of hiding behind one another.

  ‘Well, I think I may be able to help you,’ Tiffany said.

  Some witches used a shambles to see into the present, and, with any luck, into the future as well. In the smoky gloom of the Feegle mound, the kelda was practising what she called the hiddlins – the things you did and passed on but, on the whole, passed them on as a secret. And she was acutely aware of Amber watching with clear interest. A strange child, she thought. She sees, she hears, she understands. What would we give for a world full of people like her? She had set up the cauldron17 and lit a small fire underneath the leather.

  The kelda closed her eyes, concentrated and read the memories of all the keldas who had ever been and would ever be. Millions of voices floated through her brain in no particular order, sometimes soft, never very loud, often tantalizingly beyond her reach. It was a wonderful library of information, except that all the books were out of order and so were all the pages, and there wasn’t an index anywhere. She had to follow threads that faded as she listened. She strained as small sounds, tiny glimpses, stifled cries, currents of meaning pulled her attention this way and that … And there it was, in front of her as if it had always been there, coming into focus.

  She opened her eyes, stared at the ceiling for a moment, and said, ‘I look for the big wee hag and what is it that I see?’

  She peered forward into the mists of memories old and new, and jerked her head back, nearly knocking over Amber, who said, with interest, ‘A man with no eyes?’

  ‘Well, I think I may be able to help you, Mr, er …’

  ‘Carpetlayer, miss. William Glottal Carpetlayer.’

  ‘Carpetlayer?’ said Tiffany. ‘But you’re a coachman.’

  ‘Yes, well, there’s a funny story attached to that, miss. Carpetlayer, you see, is my family name. We don’t know how we got it because, you see, none of us have ever laid a carpet!’

  Tiffany gave him a kind little smile. ‘And …?’

  Mr Carpetlayer gave her a puzzled look. ‘And what? That was the funny story!’ He started to laugh, and screamed again as a bone jumped.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘Sorry I’m a bit slow.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘And now, sir, I will sort out your bones.’

  The coach horses watched with quiet interest as she helped the man up, lending a hand as he took off his huge overcoat (with many a grunt and minor scream) and stood him so that his hands rested on the coach.

  Tiffany concentrated, feeling the man’s back through his thin vest and – yes, there it was, a jumping bone.

  She stepped across to the horses, whispering a word into each fly-flicking ear, just to be on the safe side. Then she went back to Mr Carpetlayer, who was waiting obediently, not daring to move. As she rolled up her sleeves, he said, ‘You’re not going to turn me into anything unnatural, are you, miss? I wouldn’t want to be a spider. Mortally afraid of spiders, and all my clothes are made for a man with two legs.’

  ‘Why in the world would you think I’d turn you into anything, Mr

  Carpetlayer?’ said Tiffany, gently running her hand down his spine.

  ‘Well, saving your honour’s presence, miss, I thought that’s what witches do, miss – nasty things, miss, earwigs and all that.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Can’t rightly say,’ said the coachman. ‘It’s just sort of … you know, what everybody knows.’

  Tiffany placed her fingers carefully, found the jumping bone, said, ‘This might smart a little,’ and pushed the bone back into place. The coachman screamed again.

  His horses tried to bolt, but their legs were not doing business as usual, not with the word still ringing in their ears. Tiffany had felt ashamed at the time, a year ago, when she had acquired the knowing of the horseman’s word; but then again, the old blacksmith she had helped to his death, with kindness and without pain, well, he had felt ashamed that he had nothing with which to pay her for her painstaking work, and you had to pay the witch, the same as you had to pay the ferryman, and so he had whispered into her ear the horseman’s word, which gave you the control of any horse that heard it. You couldn’t buy it, you couldn’t sell it, but you could give it away and still keep it, and even if it’d been made of lead it would have been worth its weight in gold. The former owner had whispered in her ear, ‘I promised to tell no man the word, and I ain’t!’ And he was chuckling as he died, his sense of humour being somewhat akin to that of Mr Carpetlayer.

  Mr Carpetlayer was also pretty heavy, and had slipped gently down the side of the coach and—

  ‘Why are you torturing that old man, you evil witch? Can you not see that he’s in dreadful pain?’

  Where had he come from? A shouting man, his face white with fury, his clothes as dark as an unopened cave or – and the word came to Tiffany suddenly – as a crypt. There had been no one around, she was sure of it, and no one on either side except the occasional farmer watching the st
ubbles burn as they cleared the land.

  But his face was now a few inches from hers. And he was real, not some kind of monster, because monsters don’t usually have little blobs of spittle on their lapel. And then she noticed – he stank. She’d never smelled anything so bad. It was physical, like an iron bar, and it seemed to her that she wasn’t smelling it with her nose, but with her mind. A foulness that made the average privy as fragrant as a rose.

  ‘I’m asking you politely to step back, please,’ said Tiffany. ‘I think you might have got hold of the wrong idea.’

  ‘I assure you, fiendish creature, that I have only the right idea! And that is to return you to the miserable and stinking hell from which you spawned!’

  All right, a madman, thought Tiffany, but if he—

  Too late. The man’s waggling finger got too close to her nose, and suddenly the empty road contained a lifetime’s supply of Nac Mac Feegles. The man in black flailed at them, but that sort of thing does not work very well with a Feegle. He did manage, despite the Feegle onslaught, to shout, ‘Be gone, nefarious imps!’

  Every Feegle head turned hopefully when they heard this. ‘Oh aye,’ said Rob Anybody. ‘If there’s any imps aboot, we are the boys to deal with them! Your move, mister!’ They leaped at him and ended up in a heap on the road behind him, having passed straight through. They automatically punched one another as they staggered up, on the basis that if you’re having a good fight you don’t want to spoil the rhythm.

  The man in black glanced at them and then paid them no attention whatsoever.

  Tiffany stared down at the man’s boots. They gleamed in the sunlight, and that was wrong. She had been standing in the dust of the road for only a few minutes and her boots were grey. And there was the ground that the man was standing on, and that was wrong too. Very wrong, on a hot, cloudless day. She glanced at the horses. The word was holding them, but they were trembling with fear, like rabbits in the gaze of a fox. Then she closed her eyes and looked at him with First Sight, and saw. And said, ‘You cast no shadow. I knew something wasn’t right.’