I Shall Wear Midnight

The coach had good springs and the driver got the horses back under control quite quickly. There was silence as he climbed down from his seat, while white dust began to settle back on the road. He was a heavy-looking man who winced at every step, and in one hand he held a half-eaten cheese sandwich and in the other an unmistakable length of lead pipe. He sniffed. ‘My supervisor will have to be told. Damage to paintwork, see? Got to do a report when it’s damage to paintwork. I hate reports, never been a man what words come to with ease. Got to do it, though, when it’s damage to paintwork.’ The sandwich and, more importantly, the lead pipe disappeared back into his very large overcoat, and Tiffany was amazed at how happy she felt about that.

‘I really am very sorry,’ she said as the man helped her down from the coach roof.

‘It’s not me, you understand, it’s the paintwork. I tell them, look, I tell them there’s trolls, there’s dwarfs, huh, and you know how they drive, eyes half closed most of the time ’cause of them not liking the sun.’

Tiffany sat still as he inspected the damage and then looked up at her and noticed the pointy hat.

‘Oh,’ he said flatly. ‘A witch. First time for everything, I suppose. Do you know what I’m carrying in here, miss?’

What could be the worst thing? Tiffany thought. She said, ‘Eggs?’

‘Hah,’ said the man. ‘That we should be so lucky. It’s mirrors, miss. One mirror, in point of fact. Not a flat one, either; it’s a ball, they tell me. It’s all packed up very snug and sound, or so they say, not knowing that somebody was going to drop out of the sky on it.’ He didn’t sound angry, just worn out, as if he permanently expected the world to hand him the dirty end of the stick. ‘It was made by the dwarfs,’ he added. ‘They say it cost more than a thousand Ankh-Morpork dollars, and you know what it’s for? To hang up in a dance hall in the city, where they intend to dance the waltz, which a well-brought-up young lady such as you should not know about, on account of the fact, it says in the paper, that it leads to depravity and goings-on.’

‘My word!’ said Tiffany, thinking that something like this was expected of her.

‘Well, I suppose I’d better go and see what the damage is,’ said the driver, laboriously opening the back of the coach. A large box filled quite a lot of the space. ‘It’s mostly packed with straw,’ he said. ‘Give me a hand to get it down, will you? And if it tinkles, we’re both in trouble.’

It turned out not to be as heavy as Tiffany expected. Nevertheless, they lowered it gently onto the road and the coachman rummaged among the straw inside, bringing out the mirror ball, holding it aloft like a rare jewel which, indeed, it resembled. It filled the world with sparkling light, dazzling the eyes and sending beams of flashing rays across the landscape. And at this point the man screamed in pain and dropped the ball, which shattered into a million pieces, filling the sky just for a moment with a million images of Tiffany, while he, curling up, landed on the road, raising more white dust and making little whimpering noises as the glass dropped around him.

In slightly less than an instant, the moaning man was surrounded by a ring of Feegles, armed to whatever teeth they still possessed with claymores, more claymores, bludgeons, axes, clubs and at least one more claymore. Tiffany had no idea where they had been hiding; a Feegle could hide behind a hair.

‘Don’t hurt him,’ she shouted. ‘He wasn’t going to hurt me! He’s very ill! But make yourselves useful and tidy up all this broken glass!’ She crouched down in the road and held the man’s hand. ‘How long have you had jumping bones, sir?’

‘Oh, I’ve been a martyr to them these past twenty years, miss, a martyr,’ the coachman moaned. ‘It’s the jolting of the coach, you see. It’s the suspenders — they don’t work! I don’t think I get more than just one decent night’s sleep in five, miss, and that’s the truth; I have a little snooze, turn over, like you do, and there’s this little click and then it’s agony, believe me.’

Except for a few dots on the edge of sight, there was no one else around apart from, of course, for a bunch of Nac Mac Feegles who, against all common sense, had perfected the art of hiding behind one another.

‘Well, I think I may be able to help you,’ Tiffany said.

Some witches used a shambles to see into the present, and, with any luck, into the future as well. In the smoky gloom of the Feegle mound, the kelda was practising what she called the hiddlins — the things you did and passed on but, on the whole, passed them on as a secret. And she was acutely aware of Amber watching with clear interest. A strange child, she thought. She sees, she hears, she understands. What would we give for a world full of people like her? She had set up the cauldron¹⁷ and lit a small fire underneath the leather.

The kelda closed her eyes, concentrated and read the memories of all the keldas who had ever been and would ever be. Millions of voices floated through her brain in no particular order, sometimes soft, never very loud, often tantalizingly beyond her reach. It was a wonderful library of information, except that all the books were out of order and so were all the pages, and there wasn’t an index anywhere. She had to follow threads that faded as she listened. She strained as small sounds, tiny glimpses, stifled cries, currents of meaning pulled her attention this way and that … And there it was, in front of her as if it had always been there, coming into focus.

She opened her eyes, stared at the ceiling for a moment, and said, ‘I look for the big wee hag and what is it that I see?’

She peered forward into the mists of memories old and new, and jerked her head back, nearly knocking over Amber, who said, with interest, ‘A man with no eyes?’

‘Well, I think I may be able to help you, Mr, er …’

‘Carpetlayer, miss. William Glottal Carpetlayer.’

‘Carpetlayer?’ said Tiffany. ‘But you’re a coachman.’

‘Yes, well, there’s a funny story attached to that, miss. Carpetlayer, you see, is my family name. We don’t know how we got it because, you see, none of us have ever laid a carpet! ’

Tiffany gave him a kind little smile. ‘And …?’

Mr Carpetlayer gave her a puzzled look. ‘And what? That was the funny story!’ He started to laugh, and screamed again as a bone jumped.

‘Oh yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘Sorry I’m a bit slow.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘And now, sir, I will sort out your bones.’

The coach horses watched with quiet interest as she helped the man up, lending a hand as he took off his huge overcoat (with many a grunt and minor scream) and stood him so that his hands rested on the coach.

Tiffany concentrated, feeling the man’s back through his thin vest and — yes, there it was, a jumping bone.

She stepped across to the horses, whispering a word into each fly-flicking ear, just to be on the safe side. Then she went back to Mr Carpetlayer, who was waiting obediently, not daring to move. As she rolled up her sleeves, he said, ‘You’re not going to turn me into anything unnatural, are you, miss? I wouldn’t want to be a spider. Mortally afraid of spiders, and all my clothes are made for a man with two legs.’

‘Why in the world would you think I’d turn you into anything, Mr

Carpetlayer?’ said Tiffany, gently running her hand down his spine.

‘Well, saving your honour’s presence, miss, I thought that’s what witches do, miss — nasty things, miss, earwigs and all that.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Can’t rightly say,’ said the coachman. ‘It’s just sort of … you know, what everybody knows.’

Tiffany placed her fingers carefully, found the jumping bone, said, ‘This might smart a little,’ and pushed the bone back into place. The coachman screamed again.

His horses tried to bolt, but their legs were not doing business as usual, not with the word still ringing in their ears. Tiffany had felt ashamed at the time, a year ago, when she had acquired the knowing of the horseman’s word; but then again, the old blacksmith she had helped to his death, with kindness and without pain, well, he had felt ashamed that he had nothing with which to pay her for her painstaking work, and you had to pay the witch, the same as you had to pay the ferryman, and so he had whispered into her ear the horseman’s word, which gave you the control of any horse that heard it. You couldn’t buy it, you couldn’t sell it, but you could give it away and still keep it, and even if it’d been made of lead it would have been worth its weight in gold. The former owner had whispered in her ear, ‘I promised to tell no man the word, and I ain’t!’ And he was chuckling as he died, his sense of humour being somewhat akin to that of Mr Carpetlayer.

Mr Carpetlayer was also pretty heavy, and had slipped gently down the side of the coach and—