Tiffany was going to protest, and then felt curious as she glanced around. She stepped back a few paces and let herself disappear. It was a knack and a knack that she was good at. It wasn’t invisibility, just that people didn’t notice you. All unseen, she drifted close enough to hear what the pair of them were saying, or at least what the mother was saying and the daughter was listening to.
The Duchess was complaining. ‘Been allowed to go to rack and ruin. Really, it needs a thorough overhaul! You cannot afford to be lax in a place like this! Firmness is everything! Heaven knows what this family thought it was doing!’
Her speech was punctuated by the whack of the stick on the back of another maid who was hurrying, but clearly not hurrying fast enough, under the weight of a basket full of laundry.
‘You must be rigorous in your duty to see that they are equally rigorous in theirs,’ the Duchess went on, scanning the hall for another target. ‘The laxity will stop. You see? You see? They do learn. You must never relax your guard in your pursuit of slovenliness, both in deed and manner. Do not suffer any undue familiarity! And that, of course, includes smiles. Oh, you may think, what could be so bad about a happy smile? But the innocent smile can so easily become a knowing smirk, and suggests perhaps the sharing of a joke. Are you listening to what I’m telling you?’
Tiffany was astonished. Single-handedly the Duchess had made her do something that she never thought she would do, which was to feel sorry for the bride-to-be, who at this point was standing in front of her mother like a naughty child.
Her hobby, and quite possibly one activity in life, was painting in watercolours, and although Tiffany was trying, against the worst of her instincts, to be generous to the girl, there was no denying that she looked like a watercolour – and not just a watercolour, but a watercolour painted by someone who had not much colour but large supplies of water, giving her the impression of not only being colourless but also rather damp. You could add, too, that there was so little of her that in a storm it might be quite possible that she would snap. Unseen as she was, Tiffany felt just the tiniest pang of guilt and stopped inventing other nasty things to think. Besides, compassion was setting in, blast it!
‘Now, Letitia, recite again the little poem that I taught you,’ said the Duchess.
The bride-to-be, not just blushing but melting in embarrassment and shame, looked around like a stranded mouse on a great wide floor, uncertain of which way to run.
‘If you,’ her mother prompted irritably, and gave her a prod with the stick.
‘If you …’ the girl managed. ‘If you … if you grasp the nettle lightly, it will sting you for your pain, but if you grasp the nettle boldly, soft as silk it will remain. So it is with human nature, treat them kindly, they rebel, but if you firmly grasp the nettle, then your bidding they do well.’
Tiffany realized, as the damp little voice faded away, that there was otherwise absolute silence in the hall and everybody was staring. She rather hoped that somebody might forget themselves sufficiently to start clapping, although that would probably mean the end of the world. Instead, the bride took one look at the open mouths and fled, sobbing, as fast as her very expensive but seriously impractical shoes would carry her; Tiffany heard them clicking madly all the way up the stairs, followed very shortly afterwards by the slamming of a door.
Tiffany walked away slowly, just a shadow in the air to anyone who wasn’t paying attention. She shook her head. Why had he done it? Why in the world had Roland done it? Roland could have married anyone! Not Tiffany herself, of course, but why had he chosen that, well – not to be unpleasant – skinny girl?
And her father had been a duke, her mother was a duchess and she was a duckling – well, one might try to be charitable, but she did tend to walk like one. Well, she did. If you looked carefully you could see her feet stuck out.
And if you cared about these things, the dreadful mother and the soppy daughter outranked Roland! They could officially bully him!
The old Baron, now, had been a different sort of person. Oh yes, he liked it if the children gave a little bow or curtsied if he passed them in the lane, but he knew everybody’s name, and generally their birthdays as well, and he was always polite. Tiffany remembered him stopping her one day and saying, ‘Would you be so kind as to ask your father to come and see me, please?’ It was such a gentle phrase for a man with such power.
Her mother and father used to argue about him, when they thought she was safely tucked up in bed. In between the symphony of the bedsprings she often heard them almost, but not exactly, having a row. Her father would say things like: ‘It’s all very well you saying he is generous and all that, but don’t you tell me that his ancestors didn’t get their money by grinding the faces of the poor!’ And her mother would retort: ‘I have never seen him grind anything! Anyway, that was the olden days. You’ve got to have someone to protect us. That stands to reason!’ And her father would come back with something along the lines of: ‘Protect us from who? Another man with a sword? I reckon we could do that by ourselves!’ And around this time the conversation would peter out, since her parents were still in love, in a comfortable type of way, and neither of them really wanted anything to change at all.
It seemed to her, looking down the length of the hall, that you didn’t need to grind the faces of the poor if you taught them to do their own grinding.
The shock of the thought made her giddy, but it stayed in her mind. The guards were all local boys, or married to local girls, and what would happen if everybody in the village got together and said to the new Baron: ‘Look, we will let you stay here, and you can even sleep in the big bedroom, and of course we’ll give you all your meals and flick a duster around from time to time, but apart from that this land is ours now, do you understand?’ Would it work?
Probably not. But she remembered asking her father to get the old stone barn cleaned up. That would be a start. She had plans for the old barn.
‘You there! Yes! You there in the shadows! Are you lollygagging?’
This time she paid attention. All that thinking had meant that she hadn’t paid enough attention to her little don’t-see-me trick. She stepped out of the shadows, which meant that the pointy black hat was not just a shadow. The Duchess glared at it.
It was time for Tiffany to break the ice, even though it was so thick as to require an axe. She said politely, ‘I don’t know how to lollygag, madam, but I will do my best.’
‘What? What! What did you call me?’
The people in the hall were learning fast and they were scuttling as quickly as they could to get out of the place, because the Duchess’s tone of voice was a storm warning, and nobody likes to be out in a storm.
The sudden rage overtook Tiffany. It wasn’t as if she had done anything to deserve being shouted at like that. She said, ‘I’m sorry, madam; I did not call you anything, to the best of my belief.’
This did not do anything to help; the Duchess’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, I know you. The witch – the witch girl who followed us to the city on who knows what dark errand? Oh, we know about witches where I’m from! Meddlers, sowers of doubt, breeders of discontent, lacking all morality, and charlatans into the bargain!’
The Duchess pulled herself right up and glowered at Tiffany as if she had just won a decisive victory. She tapped her cane on the ground.
Tiffany said nothing, but nothing was hard to say. She could sense the watching servants behind curtains and pillars, or peering around doors. The woman was smirking, and really needed that smirk removed, because Tiffany owed it to all witches to show the world that a witch could not be treated like this. On the other hand, if Tiffany spoke her mind it would certainly be taken out on the servants. This needed some delicate wording. It did not get it, because the old bat gave a nasty little snigger and said, ‘Well, child? Aren’t you going to try to turn me into some kind of unspeakable creature?’
Tiffany tried. She really tried. But there are times when things are just too mu
ch. She took a deep breath.
‘I don’t think I shall bother, madam, seeing as you are making such a good job of it yourself!’
The sudden silence was nevertheless peppered with little sounds like a guard behind a pillar sticking his hand over his mouth so that his shocked laughter would not be heard, and a splutter as – on the other side of a curtain – a maid almost achieved the same thing. But it was the tiny little click of a door high above that stayed in Tiffany’s memory. Was that Letitia? Had she overheard? Well, it didn’t matter, because the Duchess was gloating now, with Tiffany safely in the palm of her hand.
She shouldn’t have risen to the stupid insults, whoever was listening. And now the woman was going to take terrible delight in making trouble for Tiffany, anyone near to her and quite probably everyone she’d ever known.
Tiffany felt chilly sweat running down her back. It had never been like this before – not even with the wintersmith; not even Annagramma being unpleasant on a bad day; not even the Fairy Queen, who was good at spite. The Duchess beat them all: she was a bully, the kind of bully who forces her victim into retaliation, which therefore becomes the justification for further and nastier bullying, with collateral damage to any innocent bystanders who would be invited by the bully to put the blame for their discomfiture onto the victim.
The Duchess looked around the shadowy hall. ‘Is there a guard here?’ She waited in delighted malice. ‘I know there is a guard here somewhere!’
There was the sound of hesitant footsteps and Preston, the trainee guard, appeared from out of the shadows and walked a nervous walk towards Tiffany and the Duchess. Of course, it would have to be Preston, Tiffany thought; the other guards would be too experienced to risk a generous helping of the Duchess’s wrath. And he was smiling nervously too, not a good thing to do when dealing with people like the Duchess. At least he had the sense to salute when he reached her, and by the standards of people who had never been told how to salute properly, and in any case had to do so very rarely, it was a good salute.
The Duchess winced. ‘Why are you grinning, young man?’
Preston gave the question some serious thought, and said, ‘The sun is shining, madam, and I am happy being a guard.’
‘You will not grin at me, young man. Smiling leads to familiarity, which I will not tolerate at any price. Where is the Baron?’
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”?’