That’s him: the man in black with no eyes! And the smell! A toilet for sick weasels couldn’t smell worse! I thought it was bad last time, but that was a bed of primroses! She looked around desperately, hoping against hope not to see what she was looking for.
Letitia’s sobs were getting louder, and mixing very badly with the sounds of the Feegles groaning and swearing as they started to wake up.
The mother-in-law-to-be grabbed Roland by his jacket. ‘Come away from her right now; she is nothing but a—’
‘Roland, your father is dead!’
That silenced everybody, and Tiffany was suddenly in a thicket of stares.
Oh dear, she thought. It shouldn’t have happened like this.
‘I’m sorry,’ she managed in the accusing silence. ‘There was nothing I could do.’ She saw colour flow into his face.
‘But you were looking after him,’ said Roland, as if trying to work out a puzzle. ‘Why did you stop keeping him alive?’
‘All I could do was take the pain away. I’m so very sorry, but that’s all I could do. I’m sorry.’
‘But you’re a witch! I thought you were good at it, you’re a witch! Why did he die?’
What did the bitch do to him? Do not trust her! She is a witch! Do not suffer a witch to live!
Tiffany didn’t hear the words; they seemed to crawl across her mind like some kind of slug, leaving slime behind it, and later she wondered how many other minds it had crawled across, but now she felt Mrs Proust grip her by the arm. She saw Roland’s face contort into fury, and she remembered the screaming figure on the road, shadowless in full sunlight, delivering abuse as if it was vomit and leaving her with a sick feeling that she would never be able to get clean again.
And the people around her had a worried, hunted look, like rabbits who have smelled a fox.
Then she saw him. Hardly visible, at the edge of the crowd. There they were, or rather there they weren’t. The two holes in the air staring at her just for a moment, before vanishing. And not knowing where they had gone made them worse.
She turned to Mrs Proust. ‘What is that ?’
The woman opened her mouth to answer, but the tall watchman’s voice said, ‘Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, or rather just one gentleman in fact. I am Captain Carrot, and since I am the duty officer this evening, the doubtful pleasure of dealing with this incident falls to me, and so …’ He opened his notebook, pulled out a pencil, and gave them a confident smile. ‘Who is going to be the first to help me unravel this little conundrum? To begin with, I would very much like to know what a bunch of Nac Mac Feegle are doing in my city, apart from recovering?’
The glint off his armour hurt the eyes. And also he smelled strongly of soap, and that was good enough for Tiffany.
She began to raise her hand, but Mrs Proust grabbed it and held it firmly. This caused Tiffany to shake off Mrs Proust even more firmly and then say in a voice firmer than the grip, ‘That would be me, Captain.’
‘And you would be … ?’
Running away as soon as possible, Tiffany said to herself, but spoke up with, ‘Tiffany Aching, sir.’
‘Off to a hen night, are you?’
‘No,’ said Tiffany.
‘Yes!’ said Mrs Proust quickly.
The captain put his head on one side. ‘So only one of you is going? That doesn’t sound like much fun,’ he said, with his pencil poised over the page.
This was clearly too much for the Duchess, who pointed an accusing finger at Tiffany; it trembled with anger. ‘It is as clear as the nose on your face, Officer! This … this … this witch knew we were travelling down to the city in order to buy jewellery and gifts, and clearly, I repeat clearly, conspired with her imps to rob us!’
‘I never did!’ Tiffany yelled.
The captain held up a hand, as if the Duchess was a line of traffic. ‘Miss Aching, did you indeed encourage Feegles into the city?’
‘Well, yes, but I didn’t really intend to. It was a sort of spur-of-themoment thing. I didn’t intend—’
The captain held up his hand again. ‘Stop talking, please.’ He rubbed his nose. Then he sighed. ‘Miss Aching, I’m arresting you on suspicion of … well, I’m just feeling suspicious. Besides, I am well aware that it is impossible to lock up a Feegle who doesn’t want to be locked up. If they are friends of yours, I trust’ – he looked around meaningfully – ‘they will not do anything to get you into further trouble and, with luck, all of us will be able to get a decent night’s sleep. My fellow officer, Captain Angua, will escort you down to the Watch House. Mrs Proust, would you be so good as to go along with them and explain the way of the world to your young friend?’ Captain Angua stepped forward; she was female and beautiful and blonde – and … odd.
Captain Carrot turned to her ladyship. ‘Madam, my officers will be happy to escort you to any other hotel or inn of your choice. I see that your maidservant is holding a rather strong-looking bag. Would this be containing the jewellery of which you spoke? In which case, can we ascertain that it has not been stolen?’
Her ladyship was not happy about this, but the captain cheerfully did not notice, in that very professional way policemen have of not seeing things they don’t want to see. And there was a definite sense that he wouldn’t have paid much attention in any case.
It was Roland who opened the bag and held the purchase up to the light. The tissue paper was carefully pulled off, and in the light of the lamps something sparkled so brilliantly that it seemed not only to reflect the light but to generate it too, somewhere inside its glowing stones. It was a tiara. Several of the watchmen gasped. Roland looked smug. Letitia looked objectionably winsome. Mrs Proust sighed. And Tiffany … went back in time, just for a second. But in that second she was a little girl again, reading the well-thumbed book of fairy stories that all her sisters had read before her.
But she had seen what they had not seen; she had seen through it. It lied. No, well, not exactly lied, but told you truths that you did not want to know: that only blonde and blue-eyed girls could get the prince and wear the glittering crown. It was built into the world. Even worse, it was built into your hair colouring. Redheads and brunettes sometimes got more than a walk-on part in the land of story, but if all you had was a rather mousy shade of brown hair you were marked down to be a servant girl.
Or you could be the witch. Yes! You didn’t have to be stuck in the story. You could change it, not just for yourself, but for other people. You could change the story with a wave of your hand.
She sighed anyway, because the jewelled headdress was such a wonderful thing. But the sensible witch part of her said, ‘How often would you wear it, miss? Once in a blue moon? Something as expensive as that will spend all its time in a vault!’
‘Not stolen then,’ said Captain Carrot happily. ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Miss Aching, I suggest you tell your little chums to follow you quietly, yes?’
Tiffany looked down at the Nac Mac Feegle, who were silent, as if in shock. Of course, when about thirty deadly fighters found themselves being beaten into submission by one tiny man, it takes a while to come up with a face-saving excuse.
Rob Anybody looked up at her with a very rare expression of shame. ‘Sorry, miss. Sorry, miss,’ he said. ‘We just had considerably too much of the booze. And ye ken, the more ye have of the booze, you ken ye want to have even more of the booze, until ye falls over, which is when ye know ye’ve had enough of the booze. By the way, what the heel is crème-de-menthe? A nice green colour, ye ken, I must have drunk a bucket of that stuff! I suppose there is no point in saying we are verrae sorry? But ye ken, we did find the useless streak of rubbish for ye.’
Tiffany looked up at what remained of the King’s Head. Flickering in the torchlight it looked like some kind of skeleton of a building. Even as she watched, a large beam began to creak and dropped apologetically onto a pile of broken furniture.
‘I told you to find him; I didn’t tell you you were supposed to pull the doors
off,’ she said. She folded her arms, and the little men huddled even closer together; the next stage of female anger would be the tapping o’ the feets, which generally led them to burst into tears and walk into trees. Now, though, they formed up neatly behind her and Mrs Proust and Captain Angua.
The captain nodded at Mrs Proust and said, ‘I’m sure we can all agree that handcuffs won’t be necessary – yes, ladies?’
‘Oh, you know me, Captain,’ said Mrs Proust.
Captain Angua’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, but I don’t know anything about your little friend. I would like you to carry the broomstick, Mrs Proust.’
Tiffany could see there was no point in arguing, and handed the stick over without complaining. They walked on in silence apart from the muted mumbling of the Nac Mac Feegles.
After a while the captain said, ‘Not a good time to be wearing pointy black hats, Mrs Proust. There’s been another case, out on the plains. Some dead and alive hole you would never go to. They beat up an old lady for having a book of spells.’
‘No!’
They turned to look at Tiffany, and the Feegles walked into her ankles.
Captain Angua shook her head. ‘Sorry, miss, but it’s true. Turned out to be a book of Klatchian poetry, you know. All that wiggly writing! I suppose it looks like a spell book for those inclined to think that way. She died.’
‘I blame The Times,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘When they put that sort of thing in the paper, it gives people ideas.’
Angua shrugged. ‘From what I hear the people who did it weren’t much for reading.’
‘You’ve got to stop it!’ said Tiffany.
‘How, miss? We are the City Watch. We don’t have any real jurisdiction outside the walls. There are places out there in the woods that we probably haven’t even heard of. I don’t know where this stuff comes from. It’s like some mad idea dropping out of the air.’ The captain rubbed her hands together. ‘Of course, we don’t have any witches in the city,’ she said, ‘although there are quite a lot of hen nights, eh, Mrs Proust?’ And the captain winked. She really winked, Tiffany was certain of it, in the same way she had been certain that Captain Carrot really did not like the Duchess very much.
‘Well, I think real witches would soon stop it,’ Tiffany said. ‘They certainly would in the mountains, Mrs Proust.’
‘Oh, but we don’t have real witches in the city. You heard the captain.’ Mrs Proust glared at Tiffany and then hissed, ‘We do not argue around the normal people. It makes them jittery.’
They stopped outside a large building with blue lamps on either side of the doors. ‘Welcome to the Watch House, ladies,’ said Captain Angua. ‘Now, Miss Aching, I shall have to lock you in a cell, but it will be a clean one – no mice, hardly at all – and if Mrs Proust will keep you company, then, shall we say, I might be a bit forgetful and leave the key in the lock, do you understand? Please do not leave the building, because you will be hunted.’ She looked directly at Tiffany and added, ‘And no one should be hunted. It is a terrible thing, being hunted.’
She led them through the building and down to a row of surprisingly cosy-looking cells, gesturing for them to go inside one of them. The door of the cell clanged behind her and they heard the sound of her boots as she went back down the stone corridor.
Mrs Proust walked over to the door and reached through the bars. There was a tinkle of metal and her hand came back in with the key in it. She put it in the keyhole on this side, and turned it. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Now we are doubly safe.’
‘Och, crivens!’ said Rob Anybody. ‘Will ye no’ look at us? Slammed up in the banger!’
‘Again!’ said Daft Wullie. ‘I dinnae ken if I will ever look m’self in the face.’
Mrs Proust sat back down and stared at Tiffany. ‘All right, my girl, what was that we saw? No eyes, I noticed. No windows into the soul. No soul, perhaps?’
Tiffany felt wretched. ‘I don’t know! I met him on the road here. The Feegles walked right through him! He seems like a ghost. And he stinks. Did you smell it? And the crowd were turning on us! What harm were we doing?’
‘I’m not certain he’s a him,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘He might even be an it. Could be a demon of some sort, I suppose … but I don’t know much about them. Small-trade retail is more my forte. Not that that can’t be a bit demonic at times.’
‘But even Roland turned on me,’ said Tiffany. ‘And we’ve always been … friends.’
‘Ah-ha,’ said Mrs Proust.
‘Don’t you ah-ha me,’ snapped Tiffany. ‘How dare you ah-ha me. At least I don’t go around making witches look ridiculous!’
Mrs Proust slapped her. It was like being hit with a rubber pencil. ‘You’re a rude slip of a girl, you young hussy. And I go around keeping witches safe.’
Up in the shadows of the ceiling, Daft Wullie nudged Rob Anybody and said, ‘We cannae let somebody smack oor big wee hag, eh, Rob?’
Rob Anybody put a finger to his lips. ‘Ah weel, it can be a wee bit difficult with womenfolk arguing, ye ken. Keep right oot of it, if ye’ll tak’ ma advice as a married man. Any man who interferes in the arguin’ of women is gonnae find both of them jumping up and doon on him in a matter o’ seconds. I’m nae talkin’ about the foldin’ of the arms, the pursin’ of the lips and the tappin’ of the feets. I’m talking about the smacking around with the copper stick.’
The witches stared at one another. Tiffany felt suddenly disorientated, as if she had gone from A to Z without passing through the rest of the alphabet.
‘Did that just happen, my girl?’ said Mrs Proust.
‘Yes, it did,’ said Tiffany sharply. ‘It still stings.’ Mrs Proust said, ‘Why did we do it?’
‘To tell the truth, I hated you,’ said Tiffany. ‘Just for a moment. It frightened me. I just wanted to be rid of you. You were just—’
‘All wrong?’ said Mrs Proust.
‘That’s right!’
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Discord. Turning on the witch. Always blame the witch. Where does it start? Perhaps we have found out.’ Her ugly face stared at Tiffany, then she said, ‘When did you become a witch, my girl?’
‘I think it was when I was about eight,’ said Tiffany. And she told Mrs Proust the story about Mrs Snapperly, the witch in the hazel woods.
The woman listened carefully and settled down on the straw. ‘We know it happens sometimes,’ she said. ‘Every few hundred years or so, suddenly everyone thinks witches are bad. No one knows why it is. It just seems to happen. Have you been doing anything lately that might attract attention? Any especially important piece of magic or something?’
Tiffany thought back and then said, ‘Well, there was the hiver. But he wasn’t all that bad. And before that there was the Queen of the Fairies, but that was ages ago. It was pretty awful too, but generally speaking, I think hitting her over the head with a frying pan was the best thing I could have done at the time. And, well, I suppose I’d better say that a couple of years ago, I did kiss the winter …’
Mrs Proust had been listening to this with her mouth open, and now she said, ‘That was you?’
‘Yes,’ said Tiffany.
‘Are you sure?’ said Mrs Proust.
‘Yes. It was me. I was there.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Chilly, and then damp. I didn’t want to have to do it. I’m sorry, OK?’
‘About two years ago?’ said Mrs Proust. ‘That’s interesting. The trouble seemed to start around then, you know. Nothing particularly major; it was just as though people didn’t respect us any more. Just something in the air, you might say. I mean, that kid with the stone this morning. Well, he would never have dared try that a year ago. People always gave me a nod when I passed by in those days. And now they frown. Or they make some little sign, just in case I bring bad luck. The others have told me about this too. What’s it been like where you are?’
‘Can’t really say,’ said Tiffany. ‘People were a bit nervous of me, but on the whole I
suppose I was related to a lot of them. But everything felt odd. And I thought that was how it had to feel. I’d kissed the winter, and everybody knew it. Honestly, they do go on about it. I mean, it was only once.’
‘Well, people are packed a little more closely together around here. And witches have long memories. I mean, not individual witches, but all the witches put together can remember the really bad times. When wearing a pointy hat got a stone thrown at you, if not something worse. And when you go back further than that … It’s like a disease,’ Mrs Proust said. ‘It sort of creeps up. It’s in the wind, as if it goes from person to person. Poison goes where poison’s welcome. And there’s always an excuse, isn’t there, to throw a stone at the old lady who looks funny. It’s always easier to blame somebody. And once you’ve called someone a witch, then you’d be amazed how many things you can blame her for.’
‘They stoned her cat to death,’ said Tiffany, almost to herself.
‘And now there’s a man without a soul who’s following you. And the stink of him makes even witches hate witches. You don’t feel inclined to set fire to me, by any chance, Miss Tiffany Aching?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Tiffany.
‘Or press me flat on the ground with lots of stones on me?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘It wasn’t just stones,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘You hear people talk about witches being burned, but I don’t reckon many real witches ever did get burned unless they were tricked in some way; I think it was mostly poor old women. Witches are mostly too soggy, and it was probably a wicked waste of good timber. But it’s very easy to push an old lady down to the ground and take one of the doors off the barn and put it on top of her like a sandwich and pile stones on it until she can’t breathe any more. And that makes all the badness go away. Except that it doesn’t. Because there are other things going on, and other old ladies. And when they run out, there are always old men. Always strangers. There’s always the outsider. And then, perhaps, one day, there’s always you. That’s when the madness stops. When there’s no one left to be mad. Do you know, Tiffany Aching, that I felt it when you kissed the winter? Anyone with an ounce of magical talent felt something.’ She paused and her eyes narrowed. Now she was staring at Tiffany. ‘What did you wake up, Tiffany Aching? What rough thing opened the eyes that it had not got and wondered who you were? What have you brought upon us, Miss Tiffany Aching? What have you done?’