I Shall Wear Midnight (27 page)

Preston shifted from one foot to the other. ‘He is in the crypt, madam, paying his respects to his father.’

‘
You will not call me madam!
“Madam” is a title for the wives of
grocers! Nor can you call me “my lady”, which is a title for the wives of knights and other riffraff! I am a duchess and am therefore to be addressed as “your grace”. Do you understand?’

‘Yes … m … your grace!’ Preston threw in another salute in self-defence.

For a moment, at least, the Duchess seemed satisfied, but it was definitely among the shorter kinds of moments.

‘Very well. And now you will take this creature’ – she waved a hand towards Tiffany – ‘and lock her in your dungeon. Do you understand me?’

Shocked, Preston looked to Tiffany for guidance. She gave him a wink, just to keep his spirits up. He turned back to the Duchess.

‘Lock
her
in the dungeon?’

The Duchess glared at him. ‘That is what I said!’

Preston frowned. ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘It means taking the goats out.’

‘Young man, it is not my concern what you do with the goats! I
order
you to incarcerate this witch immediately! Now, get on with it, or I will see to it that you lose your position.’

Tiffany was already impressed with Preston, but now he won a medal. ‘Can’t do that,’ he said, ‘ ‘cause of happy ass. The sergeant told me all about it. Happy ass. Happy ass corp ass. Means you can’t just lock somebody away if they haven’t broken the law. Happy ass corp ass. It’s all written down. Happy ass corp ass,’ he repeated helpfully.

This defiance seemed to push the Duchess beyond rage and into some sort of fascinated horror. This spotty-faced youth in ill-fitting armour was defying her over some stupid words. Such a thing had never happened to her before. It was like finding out that frogs talked. That would be very fascinating and everything, but sooner or later a talking frog has to be squashed.

‘You will hand in your armour and leave this castle forthwith, do
you understand? You are sacked. You have lost your position and I will make it my business to see that you never get a job as a guard ever again, young man.’

Preston shook his head. ‘Can’t happen like that, your lady grace.

’Cause of happy ass corp ass. The sergeant said to me, “Preston, you stick to happy ass corp ass. It is your friend. You can stand on happy ass corp ass.”’

The Duchess glared at Tiffany, and since Tiffany’s silence appeared to annoy her even more than anything she would have to say, she smiled and said nothing, in the hope that the Duchess might possibly explode. Instead, and as expected, she turned on Preston.

‘How dare you talk back to me like that, you scoundrel!’ She raised the shiny stick with the knob on it. But suddenly, it seemed immovable.

‘You will not hit him, madam,’ said Tiffany in a calm voice. ‘I will see your arm breaks before you strike him. We do not strike people in this castle.’

The Duchess snarled and tugged at the stick, but neither stick nor arm seemed to want to move.

‘In a moment, the stick will come free,’ said Tiffany. ‘If you attempt to strike anyone with it again, I will break it in half. Please understand that this is not a warning – it is a forecast.’

The Duchess glared at her, but must have seen something in Tiffany’s face that her own resolute stupidity could worry about. She let go of the stick and it fell to the floor. ‘You have not heard the last of this, witch girl!’

‘Just witch, madam. Just witch,’ said Tiffany as the woman strutted at speed out of the hall.

‘Are we going to get into trouble?’ said Preston quietly.

Tiffany gave a little shrug. ‘I will see to it that you don’t,’ she said. And she thought, And so will the sergeant. I’ll make sure of it. She looked around the hall and saw the faces of the watching servants
hurriedly turn away, as if they were afraid. There wasn’t any real magic, she thought. I just stood my ground. You have to stand your ground, because it’s
your
ground.

‘I was wondering,’ said Preston, ‘if you were going to turn her into a cockroach and stamp on her. I’ve heard that witches can do that,’ he added hopefully.

‘Well, I won’t say that it is impossible,’ said Tiffany, ‘but you won’t see a witch doing it. Besides, there are practical problems.’

Preston nodded sagely. ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘The different body mass for one thing, which would mean you would end up with either one enormous human-sized cockroach, which I think would probably collapse under its own weight, or dozens or even hundreds of people-shaped cockroaches. But the snag there, I think, might be that their brain might work very badly – though, of course, if you had the right spells, I suppose you could magic all the bits of the human that wouldn’t fit into the cockroach into some kind of big bucket so they could use it to get themselves bigger again when they were tired of being small. But the problem there would be what happened if some hungry dog came along when the lid was off. That would be quite bad. Sorry, have I said something wrong?’

‘Er, no,’ said Tiffany. ‘Er, don’t you think that you’re a bit too smart to be a guard, Preston?’

Preston shrugged. ‘Well, the lads all think that I am useless,’ he said cheerfully. ‘They think that there’s got to be something wrong with someone who can pronounce the word “marvellous”.’

‘But, Preston … I know you are very clever and sufficiently erudite to know the meaning of the word “erudite”. Why do you sometimes pretend to be stupid – you know, like “doctrine” and “happy ass corp ass”?’

Preston grinned. ‘I was unfortunately born clever, miss, and I’ve learned that sometimes it’s not such a good idea to be all that clever. Saves trouble.’

Right now, it seemed to Tiffany that the clever thing would be not to be in the hall any longer. Surely the horrible woman couldn’t do
too
much damage, could she? But Roland had been so strange, acting as if they had never been friends, sounding as though he believed every complaint against her … He had never been like that before. Oh, yes … he was mourning his father, but he just didn’t seem … himself. And that dreadful old baggage had just bundled off to harry him while he was saying goodbye to his father in the coolness of the crypt, trying to find a way of saying the words that there had never been time for, trying to make up for too much silence, trying to bring back yesterday and nail it firmly to
now
.

Everyone did that. Tiffany had come back from quite a few deathbeds, and some were very nearly merry, where some decent old soul was peacefully putting down the weight of their years. Or they could be tragic, when Death had needed to bend down to harvest his due; or, well, ordinary – sad but expected, one light blinking off in a sky full of stars. And she had wondered, as she made tea, and comforted people, and listened to the tearful stories about the good old days from people who always had words left over that they thought should have been spoken. And she had decided that they weren’t there to be said in the past, but remembered in the here and now.

‘What do you think about the word “conundrum”?’

Tiffany stared at Preston, her mind still full of words people never said. ‘What was that you asked?’ she said, frowning.

‘The word “conundrum”,’ Preston repeated helpfully. ‘When you say the word, doesn’t it look in your head like a copper-coloured snake, curled up asleep?’

Now, Tiffany thought, during a day like this, anyone who wasn’t a witch would dismiss that as a bit of silliness, so that means I shouldn’t.

Preston was the worst-dressed guard in the castle; the newest guard always was. To him were given chain-mail trousers that were
mostly full of holes
²⁵
and suggested, against everything we know about moths, that moths could eat through steel. To him was given the helmet that, no matter what size your head was, would slide down and make your ears look big; and this was not forgetting that he had also inherited a breastplate with so many holes in it that it might be more useful for straining soup.

But his gaze was always alert, to the point where it made people uneasy. Preston looked at things.
Really
looked at things, so intensely that afterwards they must have felt really looked at. She had no idea what went on in his head, but it was surely pretty crowded.

‘Well, I must say I’ve never thought about that word “conundrum”,’ she said slowly, ‘but it is certainly metallic and slithery.’

‘I like words,’ said Preston. ‘“Forgiveness”: doesn’t it sound like what it is? Doesn’t it sound like a silk handkerchief gently falling down? And what about “susurration”? Doesn’t it sound to you like whispered plots and dark mysteries? … Sorry, is something wrong?’

‘Yes, I think
something
may be wrong,’ said Tiffany, looking at Preston’s worried face. ‘Susurration’ was her favourite word; she had never met anyone else who even knew it. ‘Why are you a guard, Preston?’

‘Don’t like sheep very much, not very strong so I can’t be a ploughman, too ham-fisted to be a tailor, too scared of drowning to run away to sea. My mother taught me to read and write, much against my dad’s wishes, and since that meant I was no good for a
proper
job, I got packed off to be an apprentice priest in the Church of Om. I quite liked that; I learned a lot of interesting words, but they threw me out for asking too many questions, such as, “Is this really true or what?”’ He shrugged. ‘Actually, I quite like the guarding.’ He reached down and
pulled a book out of his breastplate, which in fact could have accommodated a small library, and went on,‘There’s plenty of time for reading if you keep out of sight, and the metaphysics is quite interesting as well.’

Tiffany blinked. ‘I think you just lost me there, Preston.’

‘Really?’ said the boy. ‘Well, for example, when I’m on night duty and somebody comes to the gate, I have to say “Who goes there, friend or foe?” To which, of course, the correct answer is “Yes”.’

It took Tiffany a moment to work this one out, and she began to have some insight into how Preston might have a problem holding down a job. He continued, ‘The conundrum begins if the person at the gate says “Friend”, since they may well be lying; but the lads who have to go out at night have very cleverly devised their own shibboleth with which to answer my question, and that is: “Get your nose out of that book, Preston, and let us in right now!”‘

‘“Shibboleth” being …?’ The boy was fascinating. It was not often you found somebody who could make nonsense sound wonderfully sensible.

‘A kind of code word,’ said Preston. ‘Strictly speaking, it means a word that your enemy would be unable to say. For example, in the case of the Duchess, it might be a good idea to choose a word like “please”.’

Tiffany tried not to laugh. ‘That brain of yours is going to get you into trouble one day, Preston.’

‘Well, so long as it’s good for something.’

There was a scream from the distant kitchen, and one thing that makes humans different from animals is that they run
towards
a distress call, rather than away from it. Tiffany arrived only seconds behind Preston, and even they weren’t the first. A couple of girls were comforting Mrs Coble the cook, who was sobbing on a chair while one of the girls was wrapping a kitchen towel around her arm. The floor was steaming and a black cauldron was lying on its side.

‘I tell you, they were there!’ the cook managed between sobs. ‘All wriggling. I shall always remember it. And kicking and crying out “Mother!” I shall remember their little faces for as long as I live!’ She began sobbing again, great big sobs that threatened to choke her. Tiffany beckoned to the nearest kitchen maid, who reacted as though she’d been struck and tried to cower back.

‘Look,’ said Tiffany, ‘can someone please tell me what—
What
are you doing with that bucket?’ This was to another maid, who was dragging a bucket up from the cellar and who, at the sound of a command on top of the turmoil, dropped it. Shards of ice flew across the floor. Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘Ladies, you don’t put ice on a scald, however sensible it seems. Cool some tea – but don’t make it cold – and soak her arm in it for at least a quarter of an hour. Everybody understand? Good. Now,
what happened
?’

‘It was full of frogs!’ the cook screamed. ‘They was puddings and I set them to boiling, but when I opened it up, they was little frogs, all shouting for their mother! I told everyone, I told them! A wedding and a funeral from the same house, that’s bad luck, that is. It’s witchcraft, that’s what it is!’ Then the woman gasped and clamped her free hand over her mouth.

Tiffany kept a straight face. She looked in the cauldron, and she looked around on the floor. There was no sign of any frogs anywhere, although there were two enormous puddings, still wrapped in their pudding cloths, at the bottom of the cauldron. When she picked them out, still very hot, and placed them on the table, she couldn’t help noticing that the maids backed away from them.

‘Perfectly good plum duff,’ she said cheerily. ‘Nothing to worry about here.’

‘I have often noticed,’ said Preston, ‘that in some circumstances, boiling water can seethe in a very strange way, with water droplets appearing to jump up and down just above the surface, which I
might suggest is one reason why Mrs Coble thought she was seeing frogs?’ He leaned closer to Tiffany and whispered, ‘And another reason may quite possibly be that bottle of finest cream sherry I can see on the shelf over there, which appears to be almost empty, coupled with the lone glass noticeable in the washing-up bowl over there.’ Tiffany was impressed; she hadn’t noticed the glass.