I Shall Wear Midnight

And then she saw the glisten of tears on the faces, including the faces of Pastor Egg and even the Duchess. The echoes were of loss and remembrance, and the hall itself breathed.

I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people. I should have learned how not to sing like a turkey …

The song had finished, and people were looking around sheepishly at one another, but Nanny Ogg’s boot was already making the table rock. ‘Dance, dance, the shaking of the sheets. Dance, dance, when you hear the piper playing,’ she sang.

Tiffany thought, Is this the right song for a funeral? And then she thought, Of course it is! It’s a wonderful tune and it tells us that one day all of us will die but — and this is the important thing — we are not dead yet.

And now Nanny Ogg had jumped off the table, grabbed a hold of Pastor Egg, and as she spun him round, she sang, ‘Be assured no preacher can keep death away from any man,’ and he had the grace to smile and dance with her.

People applauded — not something Tiffany would ever have expected at a funeral. She wished, oh how she wished, to be like Nanny Ogg who understood things and knew how to hammer silence into laughter.

And then, as the applause died away, a male voice sang, ‘Down in the valley, the valley so low, hang your head easy, hear the wind blow …’ And silence stood aside in the face of the unexpectedly silver voice of the sergeant.

Nanny Ogg drifted to where Tiffany was standing. ‘Well, it looks like I’ve warmed them up. Hear them clearing their throats? I reckon the pastor will be singing by the end of the evening! And I could do with another drink. It’s thirsty work, singing.’ There was a wink, then she said to Tiffany, ‘Human being first, witch second; hard to remember, easy to do.’

It was magic; magic had turned a hall full of people who mostly did not know very many of the other people there into human beings who knew they were among other human beings and, right now, that was all that needed to matter. At which point Preston tapped her on the shoulder. He had a curious kind of worried smile on his face.

‘Sorry, miss, but I’m on duty, worst luck, and I think you ought to know we have three more visitors.’

‘Can’t you just show them in?’ said Tiffany.

‘I would like to do that, miss, only they are stuck on the roof at the moment. The sound made by three witches is a lot of swearing, miss.’

* * *

If there had been swearing, the new arrivals had apparently run out of breath by the time Tiffany located the right window and crawled out onto the lead roof of the castle. There wasn’t very much to hold onto and it was pretty misty, but she carefully made her way out there on her hands and knees and headed towards the grumbling.

‘Are there any witches up here?’ she said.

And out of the gloom came the voice of somebody not even trying to keep their temper. ‘And what in the seven hells would you do if I said no, Miss Tiffany Aching?’

‘Mrs Proust? What are you doing here?’

‘Holding onto a gargoyle! Get us down right now, my dear, because these are not my stones and Mrs Happenstance needs the privy.’

Tiffany crawled a little further, well aware of the sheer drop an inch away from her hand. ‘Preston has gone to fetch a rope. Do you have a broomstick?’

‘A sheep crashed into it,’ said Mrs Proust.

Tiffany could just make her out now. ‘You crashed into a sheep in the air?’

‘Maybe it was a cow, or something. What are those things that go snuffle snuffle?’

‘You ran into a flying hedgehog?’

‘No, as it happened. We were down low, looking for a bush for Mrs Happenstance.’ There was a sigh in the gloom. ‘It’s because of her trouble, poor soul. We’ve stopped at a lot of bushes on the way here, believe me! And do you know what? Inside every single one of them is something that stings, bites, kicks, screams, howls, squelches, farts enormously, goes all spiky, tries to knock you over or does an enormous pile of poo! Haven’t you people up here heard about porcelain?’

Tiffany was taken aback. ‘Well, yes, but not in fields!’

‘They would be all the better for it,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘I’ve ruined a decent pair of boots, I have.’

There was a clinking noise in the mist, and Tiffany was relieved to hear Preston say, ‘I have forced open the old trapdoor, ladies, if you would be kind enough to crawl this way?’

The trapdoor opened into a bedroom, clearly one that had been slept in last night by a woman. Tiffany bit her lip. ‘I think this is where the Duchess is staying. Please don’t touch anything, she’s bad enough as it is.’

‘Duchess? Sounds posh,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘What kind of a duchess, may I ask?’

Tiffany said, ‘The Duchess of Keepsake. You saw her when we had that bit of difficulty in the city. You know? At the King’s Head? They’ve got a huge property about thirty miles away.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Mrs Proust in a way that suggested that it probably wasn’t going to be very nice but would be very interesting, and probably embarrassing to somebody who wasn’t Mrs Proust. ‘I remember her, and I remember thinking when I got back from all that, Where have I seen you before, my lady? Do you know anything about her, my dear?’

‘Well, her daughter told me that a terrible fire took away her property and her whole family before she married the Duke.’

Mrs Proust brightened up, although it was the brightness on the edge of a knife. ‘Oh, really?’ she said, her voice all treacle. ‘Just fancy that. I look forward to meeting the lady again and offering my condolences …’

Tiffany decided that this was a puzzle she had no time to unravel, but there were other things to think about. ‘Er …?’ she began, looking at the very tall lady somehow trying to hide behind Mrs Proust, who turned round and said, ‘Oh dear me, where are my manners? I know, I never had any to start with. Tiffany Aching, this is Miss Cambric, better known as Long Tall Short Fat Sally. Miss Cambric is being trained by old Mrs Happenstance, who was the one you briefly saw hurrying down the stairs with one aim in mind. Sally suffers terribly from tides, poor thing. I had to bring them both because Sally had the only working broomstick I could find and she wouldn’t leave Mrs Happenstance behind. It was the devil, keeping the broomstick trim. Don’t worry, she’ll be back to about five foot six in a few hours. Of course, she’s a martyr to ceilings. And Sally, you’d better get after Mrs Happenstance right now.’

She waved a hand and the younger witch scurried off, looking nervous. When Mrs Proust gave orders, they tended to be obeyed. She turned back to Tiffany. ‘The thing that is after you has got a body now, young lady. He has stolen the body of a murderer locked up in the Tanty. You know what? Before the bloke got out of the building he killed his canary. They never kill their canary. It’s what you don’t do. You might beat another prisoner over the head with an iron bar in a riot, but you never kill a canary. That would be evil.’

It was a strange way to introduce the subject, but Mrs Proust didn’t do small talk or, for that matter, reassurance.

‘I thought something like this would happen,’ said Tiffany. ‘I knew it would. What does he look like?’

‘We lost him a couple of times,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘Calls of nature, and so on. He might have broken into a house for better clothes, I couldn’t say. He won’t care about the body. He’ll run it until he finds another one or it falls to pieces. We’ll keep an eye out for him. And this is your steading?’

Tiffany sighed, ‘Yes. And now he is chasing me like a wolf after a lamb.’

‘Then if you care about people, you must get rid of him quick,’ said Mrs Proust. ‘If a wolf gets hungry enough it will eat anything. And now, where are your manners, Miss Aching? We’re cold and wet, and by the sound of it there is food and drink downstairs, am I right?’