Roland skidded on the damp patch, and threw his arms protectively around Letitia, who squelched and oozed slightly. The Duchess loomed over the pair of them, which left little looming space available for the guards, who had to put up with looking angrily at one another.
‘What have you done to her?’ Roland demanded. ‘How did you lure her down here?’
The Toad cleared his throat and Tiffany gave him an undignified nudge with her boot. ‘Don’t you say a word, you amphibian,’ she hissed. He might be her lawyer, but if the Duchess saw a toad acting as her legal counsel, then it could only make things worse.
As it happens, her not seeing the Toad did make things worse, because the Duchess screamed, ‘Did you hear that? Is there no end to her insolence? She called me an amphibian.’
Tiffany was about to say, ‘I didn’t mean you, I meant the other amphibian,’ but stopped herself in time. She sat down, one hand shovelling straw over the Toad and turned to Roland. ‘Which question would you like me not to answer first?’
‘My men know how to make you talk!’ said the Duchess over Roland’s shoulder.
‘I already know how to talk, thank you,’ said Tiffany. ‘I thought that maybe she had come to gloat, but things seem to be more … afloat.’
‘She can’t get out, can she?’ said Roland to the sergeant.
The sergeant saluted smartly and said, ‘No, sir. I have the keys to both doors firmly in my pocket, sir.’ He gave a smug look to the Duchess’s guard when he said this, as if to say: Some people get asked important questions and come back with accurate and snappy answers around here, thank you so very much!
This was rather spoiled by the Duchess saying, ‘He twice called you “sir” instead of “my lord”, Roland. You must not let the lower orders act so familiarly to you. I have told you this before.’
Tiffany would cheerfully have kicked Roland for not coming back sharply on that one. Brian had taught him to ride a horse, she knew, and taught him how to hold a sword and how to hunt. Perhaps he should have taught him manners too.
‘Excuse me,’ she said sharply. ‘Do you intend to keep me locked up for ever? I wouldn’t mind some more socks and couple of spare dresses, and, of course, some unmentionables if that is going to be the case.’
Possibly the mention of the word ‘unmentionables’ was what flustered the young Baron. But he rallied quite quickly and said, ‘We, er … that is to say, I, er … feel we should perhaps keep you carefully but humanely where you can do no mischief until after the wedding. You do seem to be the centre of a lot of unfortunate events recently. I’m sorry about this.’
Tiffany didn’t dare say anything, because it isn’t polite to burst out laughing after such a solemn and stupid sentence as that.
He went on, trying to smile, ‘You will be made comfortable, and of course we will take the goats out, if you wish.’
‘I’d like you to leave them in here, if it’s all the same to you,’ said Tiffany. ‘I am beginning to enjoy the pleasure of their company. But may I ask a question?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘This is not going to be about spinning wheels, is it?’ Tiffany asked. Well, after all, there was only one way this stupid reasoning could be taking them.
‘What?’ said Roland.
The Duchess laughed triumphantly. ‘Oh yes, it would be just like the saucy and all-too-confident young madam to taunt us with her intentions! How many spinning wheels do we have in this castle, Roland?’
The young man looked startled. He always did when his future mother-in-law addressed him. ‘Er, I don’t really know. I think the housekeeper has one, my mother’s wheel is still in the high tower … there’s always a few around. My father likes – liked – to see people busy with their hands. And … really, I don’t know.’
‘I shall tell the men to search the castle and destroy every single one of them!’ said the Duchess. ‘I shall call her bluff ! Surely everyone knows about spiteful witches and spinning wheels? One little prick upon the finger and we’ll all end up going to sleep for a hundred years!’
Letitia, who had been standing in a state of snuffle, managed to say, ‘Mother, you know you’ve never let me touch a spinning wheel.’
‘And you never will touch a spinning wheel, ever, Letitia, never in your life. Such things are there for the labouring classes. You are a lady. Spinning is for servants.’
Roland had gone red. ‘My mother used to spin,’ he said in a deliberate kind of way. ‘I used to sit up in the high tower when she was using it sometimes. It was inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Nobody is to touch it.’ It seemed to Tiffany, watching through the bars, that only someone with half a heart, very little kindness and no common sense at all would have said anything at this point. But the Duchess had no common sense, probably because it was, well, too common.
‘I insist—’ she began.
‘No,’ said Roland. The word wasn’t loud, but it had a quietness that was somehow louder than a shout, and undertones and overtones that would have stopped a herd of elephants in their tracks. Or, in this case, one Duchess. But she gave her son-in-law a look which promised him a hard time when she could be bothered to think of one.
Out of sympathy, Tiffany said, ‘Look, I only mentioned about the spinning wheels to be sarcastic. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen any more. I’m not sure that it ever did. I mean, people going to sleep for a hundred years while all the trees and plants grow up over the palace? How is that supposed to work? Why weren’t the plants sleeping as well? Otherwise you would get brambles growing up people’s nostrils, and I bet that would wake up anybody. And what happened when it snowed?’ As she said this she fixed her attention on Letitia, who was almost screaming a very interesting spill word, which Tiffany had noted for later consideration.
‘Well, I can see that a witch causes disruption wherever she walks,’ said the Duchess, ‘and so you will stay here, being treated with more decency than you deserve, until we say so.’
‘And what will you tell my father, Roland?’ said Tiffany sweetly.
He looked as if he’d been punched, and probably he would be if Mr Aching got wind of this. He’d need an awful lot of guards if Mr Aching found out that his youngest daughter had been locked up with goats.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Tiffany. ‘Why don’t we say that I am staying in the castle to deal with important matters? I’m sure the sergeant here can be trusted to take a message to my dad without upsetting him?’ She made this into a question and saw Roland nod, but the Duchess couldn’t help herself.
‘Your father is a tenant of the Baron and will do what he is told!’
Now Roland was trying not to squirm. When Mr Aching had worked for the old Baron, they had, as men of the world, reached a sensible arrangement, which was that Mr Aching would do whatever the Baron asked him to do. Provided the Baron asked Mr Aching to do what Mr Aching wanted to do and needed to be done.
That was what loyalty meant, her father had told her one day. It meant that good men of all sorts worked well when they understood about rights and duties and the dignity of everyday people. And people treasured that dignity all the more because that was, give or take some bed linen, pots and pans and a few tools and cutlery, more or less all they had. The arrangement didn’t need to be talked about, because every sensible person knew how it worked: while you’re a good master, I will be a good worker. I will be loyal to you, while you are loyal to me, and while the circle is unbroken, this is how things will continue to be.
And Roland was breaking the circle, or at least allowing the Duchess to do it for him. His family had ruled the Chalk for a few hundred years, and had pieces of paper to prove it. There was nothing to prove when the first Aching had set foot on the Chalk; no one had invented paper then.
People weren’t happy about witches right now – they were upset and confused – but the last thing Roland could do with was Mr Aching seeking an answer. Even with some grey in his hair Mr Aching could ask some very hard ques
tions. And I need to stay here now, Tiffany thought. I’ve found a thread, and what you do with threads is pull them. Aloud, she said, ‘I don’t mind staying here. I’m sure we don’t want any little problems.’
Roland looked relieved about this but the Duchess turned to the sergeant and said, ‘Are you sure she’s locked in?’
Brian stood up straight; he’d been standing up straight already, and was probably now on tiptoe. ‘Yes, m— your graceship, like I said, there’s only one key to fit both the doors, and I have them in my pocket right here.’ He slapped his right-hand pocket, which jingled. Apparently, the jingle was enough to satisfy the Duchess, who said, ‘Then I think we might rest a little happier in our beds tonight, Sergeant. Come, Roland, and do take care of Letitia. I fear she needs her medicine again – goodness knows what the wretched girl said to her.’
Tiffany watched them go, all except Brian, who had the decency to look embarrassed. ‘Could you come over here please, Sergeant?’
Brian sighed, and walked a little nearer to the bars. ‘You’re not going to make trouble for me, are you, Tiff?’
‘Certainly not, Brian, and I hope and trust that you will not try to make trouble for me.’
The sergeant shut his eyes and groaned. ‘You’re planning something, aren’t you? I knew it!’
‘Let me put it like this,’ said Tiffany, leaning forward. ‘How likely is it, do you think, that I’m going to stay in the cell tonight?’
Brian went to pat his pocket. ‘Well, don’t forget I’ve got the—’ It was terrible to see his face crumple up like a little puppy that’s been given a sharp telling-off. ‘You picked my pocket!’ He looked at her pleadingly, like a little puppy who was now expecting much worse than a telling-off.
To the sergeant’s shock and awe, Tiffany handed the keys back to him again, with a smile. ‘You surely don’t think a witch needs keys? And I promise you that I will be back in here by seven o’clock in the morning. I think you will agree, in the circumstances, that this is very good deal, especially since I will find some time to change the bandage on your mother’s leg.’
The look on his face was enough. He grabbed the keys thankfully. ‘I suppose it’s no good me asking you how you intend to get out?’ he said hopefully.
‘I don’t think you ought to ask that question in the circumstances, do you, Sergeant?’
He hesitated, and then smiled. ‘Thank you for thinking about my mother’s leg,’ he said. ‘It’s looking a bit purple at the moment.’
Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘The trouble is, Brian, you and I are the only ones thinking about your mother’s bad leg. There’s old folks out there who need someone to help them in and out of the bathtub. There’s pills and potions that need making and taking to people in the hard-to-get-to places. There is Mr Bouncer, who can hardly walk at all unless I give him a good rubbing of embrocation.’ She pulled out her diary, held together with bits of string and elastic bands, and waved it at him. ‘This is full of things for me to do, because I am the witch. If I don’t do them, who will? Young Mrs Trollope is due to have twins soon, I’m sure of it, I can hear the separate heartbeats. First-time births too. She is already scared stiff, and the nearest other midwife is ten miles away and, I have to say, a bit short-sighted and forgetful. You are an officer, Brian. Officers are supposed to be men of resource, so if the poor young mother comes looking for help, I am sure you will know what to do.’
She had the pleasure of seeing his face go very nearly white. Before he could stutter a reply she continued, ‘But I can’t help, you see, because the wicked witch must be locked up in case she gets her hands on a loaded spinning wheel! Locked up for a fairy story! And the trouble is, I think somebody might die. And if I let them die, then I am a bad witch. The trouble is, I am a bad witch anyway. I must be, because you have locked me up.’
She did actually feel sorry for him. He hadn’t become a sergeant to deal with things like this; most of his tactical experience lay in catching escaped pigs. Should I blame him for what he’s been ordered to do? she wondered. After all, you can’t blame the hammer for what the carpenter does with it. But Brian has got a brain, and the hammer hasn’t. Maybe he should try to use it.
Tiffany waited until the sound of his boots indicated that the sergeant had decided quite correctly that it might be a good idea to have a plausible distance between the cell and himself that evening, and also perhaps a little think about his future. Besides, the Feegles began to appear from every crevice, and they had a wonderful instinct for not getting spotted.
‘You shouldn’t have pick-pocketed his keys,’ she said as Rob Anybody spat out a piece of straw.
‘Aye? He wants to keep you locked up!’
‘Well, yes, but he’s a decent person.’ She knew that sounded stupid, and Rob Anybody must have known that too.
‘Oh aye, sure, a decent person who will lock you up at the bidding of that snotty old carlin?’ he snarled. ‘And what about that big wee strip o’ dribbling in the white dress? I was reckoning we’d have to build guttering in front of her.’
‘Was she one o’ them water nymphs?’ said Daft Wullie, but the majority view was that the girl was somehow made of ice and had been melting away. Lower down the steps, a mouse was swimming to safety.
Almost without her knowing it, Tiffany’s left hand slid into her pocket and pulled out a piece of string, which was temporarily dropped onto Rob Anybody’s head. The hand went back into her pocket and came back out with one interesting small key she had picked up by the side of the road three weeks ago, an empty packet that had once contained flower seeds, and a small stone with a hole in it. Tiffany always picked up small stones with holes in them, because they were lucky; she kept them in her pocket until the stone wore through the cloth and fell out, leaving only the hole. That was enough to make an emergency shamble, except that you usually needed something alive, of course. The Toad’s dinner of beetles had entirely disappeared, mostly into the Toad, so she picked him up and tied him gently into the pattern, paying no attention to his threats of legal action.
‘I don’t know why you don’t use one of the Feegles,’ he said. ‘They like this sort of thing!’
‘Yes, but half the time the shamble ends up pointing me to the nearest pub. Now, just hang on, will you?’
The goats carried on chewing as she moved the shamble this way and that, searching for a clue. Letitia had been sorry, deeply damply sorry. And that last set of spill words was a set of words she wasn’t brave enough to say but not quick enough to stop. They were: ‘I didn’t mean it!’
No one knew how a shamble worked. Everybody knew that it did. Perhaps all it did do was make you think. Maybe what it did do was give your eyes something to look at while you thought, and Tiffany thought: Someone else in this building is magical. The shamble twisted, the Toad complained and the silver thread of a conclusion floated across Tiffany’s Second Sight. She turned her eyes towards the ceiling. The silver thread glittered, and she thought: Someone in this building is using magic. Someone who is very sorry that they did.
Was it possible that the permanently pale, permanently damp and irrevocably watercolouring Letitia was actually a witch? It seemed unthinkable. Well, there was no sense in wondering what was happening when you could simply go and find out for yourself.
It was nice to think that the barons of the Chalk had got along with so many people over the years that they’d forgotten how to lock anybody up. The dungeon had become a goat shed, and the difference between a dungeon and a goat shed is that you don’t need a fire in a goat shed, because goats are pretty good at keeping themselves warm. You do need one in a dungeon, however, if you want to keep your prisoners nice and warm, and if you really don’t like your prisoners then you’ll need a fire to get them nasty and warm. Terminally hot. Granny Aching had told Tiffany once that when she was a girl there had been all kinds of horrible metal things in the dungeon, mostly for taking people apart a little bit at a time, but as it turned out there was never a pr
isoner bad enough to use them on. And, if it came to that, no one in the castle wanted to use any of the things, which often trapped your fingers if you weren’t careful, so they were all sent down to the blacksmith for turning into more sensible things like shovels and knives, except for the Iron Maiden, which had been used as a turnip clamp until the top fell off.
And so, because nobody in the castle had ever been very enthusiastic about the dungeon, everybody had forgotten that it had a chimney. And that is why Tiffany looked up and saw, high above her, that little patch of blue which a prisoner calls the sky, but which she, as soon as it was dark enough, intended to call the exit.
It turned out to be a little more tricky to use than she had hoped; it was too narrow for her to go up sitting on the stick, so she had to hang onto the bristles and let the broomstick drag her up while she fended herself off the walls with her boots.
At least she knew her way around up there. All the kids did. There probably wasn’t a boy growing up in the Chalk who hadn’t scratched his name in the lead on the roof, quite probably alongside the names of his father, grandfathers, great-grandfathers and even great-great-grandfathers, until the names got lost in the scratches.
The whole point about a castle is that nobody should get in if you don’t want them to, and so there were no windows until you got nearly to the top, where the best rooms were. Roland had long ago moved into his father’s room – she knew that because she had helped him move his stuff in when the old Baron had finally accepted that he was too sick to manage the stairs any longer. The Duchess would be in the big guestroom, halfway between that room and the Maiden Tower – which really was its name – where Letitia would be sleeping. No one would draw attention to this, but the arrangement meant that the bride’s mother would be sleeping in the room between the groom and the bride, possibly with her ears highly tuned at all times for any sound of hanky or even panky.
Tiffany crept quietly through the gloom and stepped neatly into an alcove when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. They belonged to a maid, carrying a jug on a tray, which she very nearly spilled when the door to the Duchess’s room was flung open and the Duchess herself was glaring at her, just to check nothing was going on. When the maid moved on again, Tiffany followed her, silently and, as she had the trick of it, invisibly too. The guard sitting by the door looked up hopefully when the tray arrived, and was told sharply to go downstairs and get his own supper; then the maid stepped into the room, the tray was placed beside the big bed, and the maid left, wondering for a moment whether her eyes had been playing tricks on her.