I Shall Wear Midnight

‘I must say you look extremely flustered, miss.’

‘The old Baron is dead,’ said Tiffany.

‘Well, only to be expected. Long live the Baron,’ said the Toad.

‘He’s not going to live long,’ said Tiffany. ‘He’s dead.’

‘No,’ croaked the Toad. ‘It’s what you’re supposed to say. When a king dies, you have to immediately announce that there is another king. It’s important. I wonder what the new one will be like. Rob Anybody says that he’s a wet nelly who is not fit to lick your boots. And has scorned you very badly.’

Whatever the circumstances of the past, Tiffany was not going to let that go by unchallenged. ‘I don’t need anybody to lick anything for me, thank you very much. Anyway,’ she added, ‘he’s not their baron, is he? The Feegles pride themselves on not having a lord.’

‘You are correct in your submission,’ said the Toad ponderously, ‘but you must remember that they also pride themselves on having as much as possible to drink at the slightest possible excuse, which leaves them of an uncertain temper, and that the Baron quite definitely believes that he is, de facto, the owner of all the property hereabouts. A claim that stands up in law. Although I am sorry to say that I can no longer do the same. But the girl, now, she is something strange. Haven’t you noticed?’

Haven’t I noticed? Tiffany thought quickly. What should I have noticed? Amber was just a kid;¹³ she had seen her around — not so quiet as to be worrying, not so noisy as to be annoying. And that was it. But then she thought, The chickens. That was strange.

‘She can speak Feegle!’ said the Toad. ‘And I don’t mean all that crivens business; that’s just the patois. I mean the serious old-fashioned stuff that the kelda speaks, the language they spoke from wherever it was they came from before they came from there. I am sorry, with preparation I am sure I could have made a better sentence.’ He paused. ‘I don’t understand a word of Feegle myself, but the girl seems to have just picked it up. And another thing, I’ll swear she’s been trying to talk to me in Toad. I’m not much good at it myself, but a little bit of understanding did come with the … shape change, as it were.’

‘Are you saying that she understands unusual words?’ said Tiffany.

‘I’m not certain,’ said the Toad. ‘I think she understands meaning.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Tiffany. ‘I’ve always thought she was a bit simple.’

‘Simple?’ said the Toad, who seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘Well, as a lawyer I can tell you that something that looks very simple indeed can be incredibly complicated, especially if I’m being paid by the hour. The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.’

Amber poked her head out of the hole. ‘Mrs Kelda says to meet her in the chalk pit,’ she said excitedly.

There was a faint cheering coming from the chalk pit as Tiffany lowered herself gingerly through the careful camouflage.

She liked the pit. It seemed impossible to be truly unhappy there, with the damp white walls cradling her and the light of the blue day pricking through the briars. Sometimes, when she was much younger, she had seen the ancient fish swimming in and out of the chalk pit, ancient fish from the time when the Chalk was the land under the waves. The water had gone long ago, but the souls of the ghost fish hadn’t noticed. They were as armoured as knights and ancient as the chalk. But she didn’t see them any more. Perhaps your eyesight changes as you get older, she thought.

There was a strong smell of garlic. A large part of the bottom of the pit was full of snails. Feegles were walking carefully among them, painting numbers on their shells. Amber was sitting next to the kelda, with her hands clasped round her knees. Seen from above, it looked for all the world like a sheepdog trials, but with less barking and a lot more stickiness.

The kelda spotted Tiffany, and raised a tiny finger to her lips, followed by a brief nod at Amber, who was now engrossed in the proceedings. Jeannie patted the space on the other side of her, and said, ‘We are watching the lads putting our brand on the livestock, ye ken.’ There was a slight touch of strangeness to her voice. It was the kind of voice a grown-up uses when it tells a child ‘We are having fun, aren’t we?’, in case the child hasn’t reached that conclusion yet. But Amber really did look as if she was enjoying herself. It occurred to Tiffany that being around the Feegles seemed to make Amber happy.

She got the impression that the kelda wanted to keep the conversation light, so she simply asked, ‘Why mark them? Who’s going to try to steal them?’

‘Other Feegles, of course. My Rob reckons they will be queuing up to steal our snails while they are left unprotected, ye ken.’

Tiffany was mystified. ‘Why would they be unprotected?’

‘Because my lads, ye ken, will be away stealing their livestock. It’s an old Feegle tradition, it means everyone gets in lots of fighting, rustling and stealing and, of course, the all-time favourite, boozing.’ The kelda winked at Tiffany. ‘Well, it keeps the lads happy, and stops them fretting and getting under our feet, ye ken.’

She winked at Tiffany again and patted Amber on the leg, and said something to her in the language that sounded like a very old version of Feegle. Amber answered in the same language. The kelda nodded meaningfully at Tiffany and pointed to the other end of the pit.

‘What did you just say to her?’ said Tiffany, looking back at the girl, who was still watching the Feegles with the same smiling interest.

‘I told her that you and I were going to have a conversation for grown-ups,’ said the kelda, ‘and she just said the boys were very funny, and I don’t know how, but she has picked up the Mother of Tongues. Tiffany, I only use it to a daughter and the gonnagle,¹⁴ ye ken, and I was talking to him on the mound last night when she joined in! She picked it up just by listening! That shouldn’t happen! That’s a rare gift she has, and no mistake. She must ken the meanings in her head, and that’s magic, missy, it’s the pure quill and no mistake.’

‘How could it happen?’

‘Who knows?’ said the kelda. ‘It’s a gift. And if ye take my advice, ye will set this girl to training.’

‘Isn’t she a bit too old to be starting?’ said Tiffany.

‘Put her to the craft, or find some channel for her gift. Believe me, my girl, I wouldnae want ye to believe that beating a girl nigh on to death is a good thing, but who kens how our paths are chosen? And so she ended up here, with me. She has the gift of understandin’. Would she have found it else? Ye know full well that the meaning of life is to find your gift. To find your gift is happiness. Never tae find it is misery. Ye said she’s a bit simple: find her a teacher who can bring out the complicated in her. The girl learned a difficult language just by listening to it. The world sore needs folk that can do that.’

It made sense. Everything the kelda said made sense.

Jeannie paused and then said, ‘I am very sorry the Baron is dead.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Tiffany said. ‘I meant to tell you.’

The kelda smiled at her. ‘Do you think a kelda would need to be told something like that, my girl? He was a decent man, and ye did right by him.’

‘I’ve got to go and find the new Baron,’ said Tiffany. ‘And I’ll need the boys to help me find him. There’s thousands of people in the city, and the lads are very good at finding things.’¹⁵ She glanced up at the sky. Tiffany had never flown all the way to the big city before and didn’t much fancy flying there in the darkness. ‘I shall leave at first light. But first of all, Jeannie, I think I’d better take Amber back home. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Amber,’ she said hopelessly …

Three quarters of an hour later, Tiffany flew her stick back down towards the village, the screams still ringing in her head. Amber wasn’t going back. She had, in fact, made her reluctance to leave the mound abundantly clear by bracing her arms and legs in the hole and staying there screaming at the top of her voice every time Tiffany gave a gentle pull; when she let go, the girl went back to sit next to the kelda. So that was that. You try to make plans for people, and the people make other plans.

However you looked at it, Amber had parents; pretty awful parents, you might say, and you might add that that was giving them the best of it. At least they had to know that she was safe … And in any case, what possible harm could come to Amber in the care of the kelda?

Mrs Petty slammed the door shut when she saw that it was Tiffany on the step, then opened it again almost immediately, in a flood of tears. The place stank, not just of stale beer and bad cooking but also of helplessness and bewilderment. A cat, the mangiest that Tiffany had ever seen, was almost certainly another part of the problem.