The stink was suddenly unbearable. The sheer hatred in it seemed to beat on Tiffany’s brain. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes, she thought as she stared into the night-time gloom. By the stinking of my nose, something evil this way goes, she added, to stop herself gibbering as she scanned the distant hedge for movement.
And there was a figure.
There, heavy-set, walking towards them down the length of the field. It moved slowly, but was gathering speed. There was an awkwardness about it. ‘When he takes over a body, the owner of the body becomes a part of him too. No escape, no release.’ That’s what Eskarina had told her. Nothing good, nothing capable of redemption, could have thoughts that stank like that. She gripped the hands of the arguing couple and dragged them into a run. The … creature was between them and the castle. And was going more slowly than she’d expected. She risked another look and saw the glint of metal in its hands. Knives.
‘Come on!’
‘These aren’t very good shoes for running in,’ Letitia pointed out.
‘My head aches,’ Roland supplied as Tiffany towed them towards the bottom of the field, ignoring all complaints as dry corn stalks snatched at them, caught hair, scratched legs and stung feet. They were barely going at a jog. The creature was following them doggedly. As soon as they turned to run up towards the castle and safety, it would gain on them …
But the creature was having difficulties as well, and Tiffany wondered how far you could push a body if you didn’t feel its pain, couldn’t feel the agony of the lungs, the pounding of the heart, the cracking of the bones, the dreadful ache that pushed you to the last gasp and beyond. Mrs Proust had whispered to her, eventually, the things that the man Macintosh had done, as if saying the words aloud would pollute the air. Against that, how did you rank the crushing of the little songbird? And yet somehow that lodged in the mind as a crime beyond mercy.
There will be no mercy for a song now silenced. No redemption for killing hope in the darkness. I know you.
You are what whispered in Petty’s ear before he beat up his daughter. You are the first blast of the rough music.
You look over the shoulder at the man as he picks up the first stone, and although I think you are part of us all and we will never be rid of you, we can certainly make your life hell.
No mercy. No redemption.
Glancing back, she saw its face looming bigger now and redoubled her efforts to drag the tired and reluctant couple over the rough ground. She managed a breath to say, ‘Look at him! Look at it! Do you want him to catch us?’ She heard a brief scream from Letitia and a groan of sudden sobriety from her husband-to-be. The eyes of the luckless Macintosh were bloodshot and wide open, the lips stuck in a frenzied grin. It tried to take advantage of the sudden narrowed gap but the other two had found fresh strength in their fear and they were almost pulling Tiffany along.
And now there was a clear run up the field. It all depended on Preston. Amazingly, Tiffany felt confident. He is trustworthy, she thought, but there was a horrible gurgle behind them. The ghost was driving its host harder, and she could imagine the swish of a long knife. Timing had to be everything. Preston was trustworthy. He had understood, hadn’t he? Of course he had. She could trust Preston.
Later on, what she remembered most was the silence, broken only by the crackling of the stalks and the heavy breathing of Letitia and Roland and the horrible wheezing of their pursuer. In her head the silence was broken by the voice of the Cunning Man.
You are setting a trap. Filth! Do you think I can be so easily caught again? Little girls who play with fire will get burned, and you will burn, I promise you, oh you will burn. Where then will be the pride of witches! Vessels of iniquity! Handmaidens of uncleanliness! Defilers of all that is holy!
Tiffany kept her eyes fixed on the end of the field as tears streamed out. She couldn’t help it. It was impossible to keep the vileness out; it drizzled in like poison, seeping into her ears and flowing under her skin.
Another swish in the air behind them made all three runners find redoubled strength, but she knew it couldn’t go on. Was that Preston she saw in the gloom ahead? Then who was the dark figure beside him, looking like an old witch in a pointy hat? Even as she stared at it, it faded away.
But suddenly fire burst up and Tiffany could hear the crackling as it spread like a sunrise across the field towards them, sparks filling the sky with extra stars. And the wind blew hard and she heard the stinking voice again: You will burn. You will burn!
And the wind gusted and the flames blew up, and now a wall of fire was racing through the stubbles as fast as the wind itself. Tiffany looked down and the hare was back, running along beside them without any apparent effort; she looked at Tiffany, flicked up her legs and ran, ran directly towards the fire now, seriously ran.
‘Run!’ Tiffany commanded. ‘The fire will not burn you if you do what I say! Run fast! Run fast! Roland, run to save Letitia. Letitia, run to save Roland.’
The fire was almost on them. I need the strength, she thought. I need the power. And she remembered Nanny Ogg saying: ‘The world changes. The world flows. There’s power there, my girl.’
Weddings and funerals are a time of power … yes, weddings. Tiffany grasped their two hands even tighter. And here it came. A crackling, roaring wall of flame …
‘Leap!’
And as they leaped, she screamed: ‘Leap, knave. jump, whore.’ She felt them lift as the fire reached them.
Time hesitated. A rabbit sped past beneath them, fleeing in terror from the flames. He will flee, she thought. He will run from the fire, but the fire will run to him. And the fire runs much faster than a dying body.
Tiffany floated in a ball of yellow flame. The hare drifted past her, a creature happy in her element. We are not as fast as you, she thought. We will get singed. She looked right and left at the bride and groom, who were staring ahead as if hypnotised, and pulled them towards her. She understood. I am going to marry you, Roland. I said I would.
She would make something beautiful out of this fire.
‘Back to the hells you came from, you Cunning Man,’ she yelled above the flames. ‘Leap, knave! jump, whore!’ she screamed again.
‘Be married now for ever more! ‘ And this is a wedding, she said to herself. A fresh start. And for a few seconds in the world, this is a place of power. Oh yes, a place of power.
They landed, rolling, behind the wall of fire. Tiffany was ready, stamping out embers and kicking the small flames that remained.
Preston was suddenly there too, picking up Letitia and carrying her out of the ash. Tiffany put an arm round Roland, who had had a soft landing (possibly on his head, part of Tiffany thought), and followed him.
‘Looks like very minor burns and some frizzled hair,’ said Preston, ‘and as for your old boyfriend, I think his mud is now baked on. How did you manage it?’
Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘The hare jumps through the flames so fast that she barely feels them,’ she said, ‘and when she lands, she lands on hot ash mostly. A grass fire burns out quickly under a strong wind.’
There was a scream from behind them, and she imagined a lumbering figure trying to outrun the wind-driven flames bearing down on it, and failing. She felt the pain of a creature that had twisted through the world for hundreds of years.
‘The three of you, stay right here. Do not follow me! Preston, look after them!’
Tiffany walked across the cooling ash. I have to see, she thought. I have to witness. I have to know what it is that I have done!
The dead man’s clothes were smouldering. There was no pulse. He did terrible things to people, she thought: things that made even the prison warders sick. But what was done to him first? Was he just a much worse version of Mr Petty? Could he ever have been good? How do you change the past? Where does evil begin?
She felt the words slide into her mind like a worm: Murderer, filth, killer! And she felt she should apologize to her ears for what t
hey had to hear. But the voice of the ghost was weak and thin and querulous, sliding backwards into history.
You can’t reach me, she thought. You are used up. You are too weak now. How hard was it, forcing a man to run himself to death? You can’t get in. I can feel you trying. She reached down into the ash and picked up a lump of flint, still warm from the fire;
the soil was full of it, the sharpest of stones. Born in the chalk, and so in a way was Tiffany. Its smoothness was the touch of a friend.
‘You never learn, do you?’ she said. ‘You don’t understand that other people think too. Of course you wouldn’t run into the fire; but in your arrogance you never realized that the fire would run to you.’
Your power is only rumour and lies, she thought. You bore your way into people when they are uncertain and weak and worried and frightened, and they think their enemy is other people when their enemy is, and always will be, you – the master of lies. Outside, you are fearsome; inside, you are nothing but weakness.
Inside, I am flint.
She felt the heat of the whole field, steadied herself and gripped the stone. How dare you come here, you worm! How dare you trespass on what is mine! She felt the flint get hotter in her hand and then melt and flow between her fingers and drip onto the soil as she concentrated. She had never tried this before and she took a deep breath of air that somehow the flames had cleansed.
And if you come back, Cunning Man, there will be another witch like me. There will always be another witch like me, because there are always going to be things like you, because we make space for them. But right now, on this bleeding piece of earth, I am the witch and you are nothing. By the blinking of my eyes, something wicked this way dies.
A hiss in her mind faded away and left her alone among her thoughts.
‘No mercy,’ she said aloud, ‘no redemption. You forced a man to kill his harmless songbird, and somehow I think that was the greatest crime of them all.’
By the time she had walked back up the field, she had managed to become, once again, the Tiffany Aching who knew how to make cheese and deal with everyday chores and didn’t squeeze molten rock between her fingers.
The happy but slightly singed couple were beginning to take some notice of things. Letitia sat up. ‘I feel cooked,’ she said. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘Sorry, it’s you,’ said Tiffany, ‘and I’m afraid that wonderful lace nightshirt might just about be usable to clean windows from now on. I’m afraid we didn’t leap as fast as the hare.’
Letitia looked around. ‘Is Roland … is he all right?’
‘Right as rain,’ said Preston cheerily. ‘The wet pig muck really helped.’ Letitia paused for a moment. ‘And that … thing?’
‘Gone,’ said Tiffany.
‘Are you sure Roland is all right?’ Letitia insisted.
Preston grinned. ‘Absolutely tickety boo, miss. Nothing important has been burned away, although it might be a little painful when we take the crusts off. He’s somewhat baked on, if you get my meaning.’ Letitia nodded and then turned, slowly, to Tiffany. ‘What was that you said when we were jumping?’
Tiffany took a deep breath. ‘I married you.’
‘You, that is to say you, married, which is to say, wedded … us?’ said Letitia.
‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘That is to say, certainly. Jumping over the fire together is a very ancient form of marriage. Doesn’t need any priests either, which is a great saving on the catering.’
The possible bride weighed this one up. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Well, that’s what Mrs Ogg told me,’ said Tiffany, ‘and I’ve always wanted to try it.’
This seemed to meet with Letitia’s approval, because she said, ‘Mrs Ogg is a very knowledgeable lady, I must admit. She knows a surprising number of things.’
Tiffany, keeping her face as straight as possible, said, ‘A surprising number of surprising things.’
‘Oh, yes … Er.’ Letitia cleared her throat rather hesitantly and followed up ‘er’ with an ‘um’.
‘Is something wrong?’ said Tiffany.
‘That word you used about me while we were jumping. I think it was a bad word.’
Tiffany had been expecting this. ‘Well, apparently it’s traditional.’ Her voice almost as hesitant as Letitia’s, she added, ‘And I don’t think Roland is a knave, either. And, of course, words and their usage do change over the years.’
‘I don’t think that one does!’ said Letitia.
‘Well, it depends on circumstance and context,’ said Tiffany. ‘But frankly, Letitia, a witch will use any tool at hand in an emergency, as you might learn one day. Besides, the way we think about some words does change. For example, do you know the meaning of the word “buxom”?’ She thought to herself, Why am I making this small talk? I know: because it’s an anchor, and reassures me that I am a human being among other humans, and it helps wash the terror out of my soul …
‘Yes,’ said the bride-to-be. ‘I’m afraid I’m not, very, um, large in that department.’
‘That would have been a bit unfortunate a couple of hundred years ago because the wedding service in those days required a bride to be buxom towards her husband.’
‘I’d have had to push a cushion down my bodice!’
‘Not really; it used to mean kind, understanding and obedient,’ said Tiffany.
‘Oh, I can do those,’ said Letitia. ‘At least, the first two,’ she added with a grin. She cleared her throat. ‘What is it, apart from getting married, of course – and I am very amused about that – that we have just done?’
‘Well,’ said Tiffany. ‘You have helped me trap one of the worst monsters that has ever fouled the world.’
The new bride brightened up. ‘Did we? Well, that’s good,’ she said.
‘I’m very glad we did that. I don’t know how we can repay you for all your help though.’
‘Well, clean used linen and old boots are always welcome,’ said Tiffany seriously. ‘But you don’t have to thank me for being a witch. I’d much prefer that you thanked my friend Preston. He put himself in real danger for the pair of you. At least we were together. He was out here all by himself.’
‘That is, in point of actual fact,’ said Preston, ‘not entirely accurate. Apart from anything else, all my matches were damp, but fortuitously Mr Daft Wullie and his chums were very kind enough to lend me some. And I’ve been told to tell ye that that was OK, because they was helping me, not ye! And although there are ladies present, I have to say that they did assist in getting things going quickly by flapping the flames with their kilts. A sight, I may say, that once seen is never forgotten.’
‘I would very much have liked to have seen it,’ said Letitia politely.
‘Anyway,’ said Tiffany, trying to get the mental picture out of her mind, ‘it might be best to concentrate on the fact that you will be somewhat more acceptably married by Pastor Egg tomorrow. And you know something very important about tomorrow? It’s today!’
Roland, who was holding his head and groaning, blinked and said, ‘What is?’
Chapter 15
A SHADOW AND A WHISPER
IT WAS, ON THE WHOLE, a pretty good wedding in Tiffany’s opinion, a pretty good wedding. Pastor Egg, aware of the unusual number of witches in the audience, kept the religion to a minimum. The blushing bride walked up the hall, and Tiffany saw her blush a little more when she caught sight of Nanny Ogg, who gave her a cheerful thumbs-up as she passed. And then there was the throwing of the rice, followed of course by the careful sweeping up of the rice, because it was wicked to waste good food.
Then there was general cheering and congratulations and, to the surprise of some, a happy, beaming Duchess, who chatted merrily, even to the maids, and appeared to have a kind and reassuring word for everybody. And only Tiffany knew why the woman shot occasional nervous glances towards Mrs Proust.
Tiffany left then, to sneak away and help Preston in the King field, where he was digging a hole deep enoug
h so that the plough would never find the charred remains that were collected and thrown down it. They washed their hands with vicious lye soap, because you could never be too careful. It was not, strictly speaking, a very romantic occasion.
‘Do you think he will ever come back?’ said Preston as they leaned on their shovels.
Tiffany nodded. ‘The Cunning Man will, at least. Poison is always welcome somewhere.’
‘What will you do now he’s gone?’
‘Oh, you know, all the exciting stuff; somewhere there is always a leg that needs bandaging or a nose that needs blowing. It’s busy, busy all day long.’
‘It doesn’t sound very exciting.’
‘Well, I suppose so,’ said Tiffany, ‘but compared to yesterday that kind of day suddenly seems to be a very good day.’ They headed towards the hall, where the wedding breakfast was now being served as lunch. ‘You are a young man of considerable resourcefulness,’ Tiffany said to Preston, ‘and I thank you very much for your help.’
Preston nodded happily. ‘Thank you very much for that, miss, thank you very much indeed, but with just one little – how can I put it – correction. You are, after all, sixteen, more or less, and I am seventeen, so I think you will conclude that calling me young man … I will own up to a cheerful and youthful disposition, but I am older than you, my girl.’
There was a pause. Then Tiffany said carefully, ‘How do you know how old I am?’
‘I asked around,’ said Preston, his eager smile never leaving his face.
‘Why?’
Tiffany didn’t get an answer because the sergeant came out of the main door with confetti cascading off his helmet. ‘Oh, there you are, miss. The Baron’s been asking after you, and so has the Baroness.’ He paused to smile and said, ‘Nice to have one of them again.’ His gaze fell on Preston and the sergeant frowned. ‘Lollygagging again, as usual, Lance Private Preston?’
Preston saluted smartly, ‘You are correct in your surmise, Sergeant; you have voiced an absolute truth.’ This got Preston the puzzled glare he always got from the sergeant, and there was also a disapproving grunt, which meant: One day I’ll work out what it is you are saying, my lad, and then you’ll be in trouble.