I Shall Wear Midnight

‘Weel,’ said Rob Anybody, ‘in actual point of fact, the snailrustling is still in the early stages of development at this time.’

‘Have you no good points?’ said Wee Mad Arthur desperately.

Rob Anybody looked puzzled. ‘We kind of thought them is our good points, but if you want to get picky, we never steal from them as has nae money, we has hearts of gold, although maybe — OK, mostly — somebody else’s gold, and we did invent the deep-fried stoat. That must count for something.’

‘How is that a good point?’ said Arthur.

‘Weel, it saves some other poor devil having tae do it. It’s what ye might call a taste explosion; ye take a mouthful, taste it, and then there is an explosion.’

Despite himself, Wee Mad Arthur was grinning. ‘Have you boys got no shame?’

Rob Anybody matched him grin for grin. ‘I couldnae say,’ he replied, ‘but if we have, it probably belonged tae somebody else.’

‘And what about the poor wee big lassie locked up and down in the Watch House?’ said Wee Mad Arthur.

‘Oh, she’ll bide fine till the morning,’ said Rob Anybody, as loftily as he could in the circumstances. ‘She is a hag o’ considerable resource.’

‘Ye think so? You wee scunners punched an entire pub to death! How can anyone put that right?’

This time Rob Anybody gave him a longer, more thoughtful look before saying, ‘Well, Mr Policeman, it seems ye are a Feegle and a copper. Well, that’s the way the world spins. But the big question for the pair of ye is: are you a sneak and a snitch?’

In the Watch House the shift was changing. Somebody came in and shyly handed Mrs Proust quite a large plate of cold meats and pickles, and a bottle of wine with two glasses. After a nervous look at Tiffany, the watchman whispered something to Mrs Proust, and in one movement she’d taken a small packet out of her pocket and shoved it into his hand. Then she came back and sat down on the straw again.

‘And I see he’s had the decency to open the bottle and let the wine breathe for a while,’ she said, and added, when she saw Tiffany’s glance, ‘Lance Constable Hopkins has a little problem that he’d rather his mother never found out about and I make a rather helpful ointment. I don’t charge him, of course. One hand washes the other, although in the case of young Hopkins I hope he scrubs it first.’

Tiffany had never drunk wine before; at home you drank small beer or small cider, which had just enough alcohol to kill off the nasty invisible tiny biting things, but not enough alcohol to make you more than a bit silly.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I never thought prison would be like this!’

‘Prison? I told you, my dear girl, this isn’t prison! If you want to know what a prison is like, visit the Tanty! That’s a dark place if you like! In here the watchmen don’t gob in your grub — at least when you’re watching, and certainly never in mine, you can be sure of that. The Tanty is a tough place; they like to think that anyone who gets put in there will think more than twice before doing anything that will get them put in there again. And they’ve tidied it up a bit these days, and not everybody who goes in comes out in a pine box, but the walls still scream silently to those with hearing. I hear them.’ She opened her snuffbox with a click. ‘And worse than the screaming is the sound of the canaries in D wing, where they lock up the men who they don’t dare hang. They bang up each one by himself in a little room, and they give him a canary as company.’ At this point Mrs Proust took a pinch of snuff, at such speed and volume that Tiffany was surprised that it didn’t come out of her ears.

The box’s lid snapped back down. ‘Those men, mark you, are not your average murderer — oh no, they killed people for a hobby, or for a god or for something to do, or because it wasn’t a very nice day. They did worse things than just murder, but murder was how it always ended. I see you haven’t touched your beef …? Oh well, if you’re quite sure …’ Mrs Proust paused with rather a large piece of heavily pickled lean beef on her knife and went on: ‘Funny thing, though, these cruel men used to look after their canaries, and cried when they died. The warders used to say it was all a sham; they said it gave them the creeps, but I’m not sure. When I was young, I used to run errands for the warders and I would look at those great heavy doors and I would listen to the little birds, and I would wonder what it is that makes the difference between a good man and a man so bad that no hangman in the city — not even my dad, who could have a man out of his cell and stone-cold dead in seven and a quarter seconds — would dare to put a rope round his neck in case he escaped from the fires of evil and came back with a vengeance.’ Mrs Proust stopped there and shivered, as if shaking off the memories. ‘That’s life in the big city, my girl; it’s not an easy bed of sweet primroses, like in the country.’

Tiffany wasn’t very happy with being called a girl again, but that wasn’t the worst of it. ‘Sweet primroses?’ she said. ‘It wasn’t sweet primroses the other day when I had to cut down a hanged man.’ And she had to tell Mrs Proust all about Mr Petty and Amber. And about the bouquet of nettles.

‘And your dad told you about the beatings?’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Sooner or later, it’s all about the soul.’

The meal had been tasty, and the wine surprisingly strong. And the straw was a lot cleaner than you might have expected. It had been a long day, piled on top of other long days. ‘Please,’ Tiffany said, ‘can we get some sleep? My father always says that things will look better in the morning.’

There was a pause. ‘Upon reflection,’ Mrs Proust said, ‘I think your father will turn out to be wrong.’

Tiffany let the clouds of tiredness take her. She dreamed about canaries singing in the dark. And perhaps she imagined it, but she thought she woke up for a moment and saw the shadow of an old lady looking at her. It certainly wasn’t Mrs Proust, who snored something terrible. The shape was there for a moment, and then it vanished. Tiffany remembered: the world is full of omens, and you picked the ones you liked.

Chapter 8: The King’s Neck

Chapter 8

THE KING’S NECK

IFFANY WAS WOKEN by the squeak of the cell door opening. She sat up and looked around. Mrs Proust was still asleep, and snoring so hard that her nose wobbled. Correction: Mrs Proust appeared to be asleep. Tiffany liked her, in a wary kind of way, but could she trust her? Sometimes she seemed to almost … read her mind.

‘I don’t read minds,’ said Mrs Proust, turning over.

‘Mrs Proust!’

Mrs Proust sat up and started to pull bits of straw off her dress. ‘I don’t read minds,’ she said, flicking the straw onto the floor. ‘I really have keen, but not supernatural, skills which I have honed to the sharpest of edges, and don’t you forget it, please. I hope to goodness they’re going to give us a cooked breakfast.’

‘No problem there — what would ye like us to fetch for ye?’

They looked up to see the Feegles sitting on the beam overhead, and dangling their feet happily.

Tiffany sighed. ‘If I asked you what you were doing last night, would you lie to me?’

‘Absolutely not, on our honour as Feegles,’ said Rob Anybody, with his hand on where he thought his heart was.

‘Well, that seems conclusive,’ said Mrs Proust, standing up.

Tiffany shook her head and sighed again. ‘No, it’s not quite as simple as that.’ She looked up at the beam and said, ‘Rob Anybody, was the answer you gave me just then truthful? I’m asking you as the hag o’ the hills.’

‘Oh aye.’

‘And that one?’

‘Oh aye.’

‘And that one?’