I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett

And so, because nobody in the castle had ever been very enthusiastic about the dungeon, everybody had forgotten that it had a chimney. And that is why Tiffany looked up and saw, high above her, that little patch of blue which a prisoner calls the sky, but which she, as soon as it was dark enough, intended to call the exit.

It turned out to be a little more tricky to use than she had hoped; it was too narrow for her to go up sitting on the stick, so she had to hang onto the bristles and let the broomstick drag her up while she fended herself off the walls with her boots.

At least she knew her way around up there. All the kids did. There probably wasn’t a boy growing up in the Chalk who hadn’t scratched his name in the lead on the roof, quite probably alongside the names of his father, grandfathers, great-grandfathers and even great-great-grandfathers, until the names got lost in the scratches.

The whole point about a castle is that nobody should get in if you don’t want them to, and so there were no windows until you got nearly to the top, where the best rooms were. Roland had long ago moved into his father’s room – she knew that because she had helped him move his stuff in when the old Baron had finally accepted that he was too sick to manage the stairs any longer. The Duchess would be in the big guestroom, halfway between that room and the Maiden Tower – which really was its name – where Letitia would be sleeping. No one would draw attention to this, but the arrangement meant that the bride’s mother would be sleeping in the room between the groom and the bride, possibly with her ears highly tuned at all times for any sound of hanky or even panky.

Tiffany crept quietly through the gloom and stepped neatly into an alcove when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. They belonged to a maid, carrying a jug on a tray, which she very nearly spilled when the door to the Duchess’s room was flung open and the Duchess herself was glaring at her, just to check nothing was going on. When the maid moved on again, Tiffany followed her, silently and, as she had the trick of it, invisibly too. The guard sitting by the door looked up hopefully when the tray arrived, and was told sharply to go downstairs and get his own supper; then the maid stepped into the room, the tray was placed beside the big bed, and the maid left, wondering for a moment whether her eyes had been playing tricks on her.

Letitia looked as though she was sleeping under freshly fallen snow, and it rather spoiled the effect when you realized that mostly it was screwed-up tissue paper. Used tissue paper, at that. It was very rare indeed on the Chalk, because it was quite expensive, and if you had any, it was not considered bad manners to dry it out in front of the fire for re-use later on. Tiffany’s father said that when he was a little boy he had to blow his nose on mice, but this was probably said in order to make her squeal.

Right now, Letitia blew her nose with an unladylike honking noise and, to Tiffany’s surprise, looked suspiciously around the room. She even said, ‘Hello? Is there anybody there?’ – a question which, considered sensibly, is never going to get you anywhere.

Tiffany pulled herself further into a shadow. She could sometimes fool Granny Weatherwax on a good day, and a soppy princess had no business sensing her presence.

‘I can scream, you know,’ said Letitia, looking around. ‘There’s a guard right outside my door!’

‘Actually, he’s gone down to get his dinner,’ said Tiffany, ‘which frankly I call very unprofessional. He should have waited to be relieved by another guard. Personally, I think your mother is more worried about how her guards look than about how they think. Even young Preston guards better than they do. Sometimes people never know he’s there until he taps them on the shoulder. Did you know that people very seldom start screaming while someone is still talking to them? I don’t know why. I suppose it’s because we are brought up to be polite. And if you think you’re going to do so now, I would like to point out that if I was planning to do anything nasty I would have done so already, don’t you think?’

The pause was rather longer than Tiffany liked. Then Letitia said, ‘You have every right to be angry. You are angry, aren’t you?’

‘Not at the moment. By the way, aren’t you going to drink your milk before it gets cold?’

‘Actually, I always tip it down the privy. I know that it’s a wicked waste of good food and that there are a lot of poor children who would love a nightcap of warm milk, but they don’t deserve mine because my mother makes the maids put a medicine in it to help me sleep.’

‘Why?’ said Tiffany incredulously.

‘She thinks I need it. I don’t, really. You have no idea what it’s like. It’s like being in prison.’

‘Well, I think I know what that’s like now,’ said Tiffany. The girl in the bed started to cry again, and Tiffany hushed her into silence.

‘I didn’t mean it to get that bad,’ said Letitia, blowing her nose like a hunting horn. ‘I just wanted Roland not to like you so much. You can’t imagine what it’s like, being me! The most I’m allowed to do is paint pictures, and only watercolours at that. Not even charcoal sketches!’

‘I wondered about that,’ said Tiffany absent-mindedly. ‘Roland once used to write to Lord Diver’s daughter, Iodine, and she used to paint watercolours all the time too. I wondered if it was some kind of punishment.’

But Letitia wasn’t listening. ‘You don’t have to just sit and paint pictures. You can fly around all the time,’ she was saying. ‘Order people about, do interesting things. Hah, I wanted to be a witch when I was little. But just my luck, I had long blonde hair and a pale complexion and a very rich father. What good was that? Girls like that can’t be witches!’

Tiffany smiled. They were getting to the truth, and it was important to stay helpful and friendly before the dam broke again and they were all flooded. ‘Did you have a book of fairy stories when you were young?’

Letitia blew her nose again. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘Was it the one with a very frightening picture of the goblin on page seven by any chance? I used to shut my eyes when I came to that page.’

‘I scribbled all over him with a black crayon,’ said Letitia in a low voice, as if it was a relief to tell somebody.

‘You didn’t like me. And so you decided to do some magic against me …’ Tiffany said it very quietly, because there was something brittle about Letitia. In fact the girl did reach for some more tissue but appeared to have run out of sobs for a moment – as it turned out, only for a moment.

‘I am so sorry! If only I had known, I would never have—’

‘Perhaps I should tell you,’ Tiffany went on, ‘that Roland and I were … well, friends. More or less the only friend the other one had. But in a way, it was the wrong kind of friendship. We didn’t come together; things happened that pushed us together. And we didn’t realize that. He was the Baron’s son, and once you know that you’re the Baron’s son and all the kids have been told how to act towards the Baron’s son, then you don’t have many people you can talk to. And then there was me. I was the girl smart enough to be a witch and I have to say that this is not a job which allows you to have that much of a social life. If you like, two people who were left out thought they were the same kind of person. I know that now. Unfortunately Roland was the first to realize that. And that’s the truth of it. I am the witch, and he is the Baron. And you will be the Baroness, and you should not worry if the witch and the Baron – for the benefit of everybody – are on good terms. And that is all there is to is, and in fact there isn’t even an it, just the ghost of an it.’

She saw relief travel across Letitia’s face like the rising sun.

‘And that’s the truth from me, miss, so I would like the truth from you. Look, can we get out of here? I’m afraid that some guards might rush in at any moment and try and put me in a place I can’t get out of.’

Tiffany managed to get Letitia onto the broomstick with her. The girl fidgeted, but simply gasped as the stick sailed down gently from the castle battlements, drifted over the village and touched down in a field.

‘Did you see those bats?’ said Letitia.

‘Oh, they often fly around the stick if you don’t move very fast,’ said Tiffany. ‘You’d think they would avoid it, really. And now, miss, now we’re both far from any help, tell me what you did that made people hate me.’

Panic filled Letitia’s face.

‘No, I’m not going to hurt you,’ said Tiffany. ‘If I was going to, I would have done it a long time ago. But I want to clean up my life. Tell me what you did.’

‘I used the ostrich trick,’ said Letitia promptly. ‘You know, it’s called unsympathetic magic: you make a model of the person and stick them upside down in a bucket of sand. I really am very, very sorry …’

‘Yes, you already said so,’ said Tiffany, ‘but I’ve never heard of this trick. I can’t see how it could work. It doesn’t make sense.’

But it worked on me, she thought. This girl isn’t a witch, and whatever she tried wasn’t a real spell, but it worked on me.

‘It doesn’t have to make sense if it’s magic,’ said Letitia hopefully.

‘It has to make some sense somewhere,’ said Tiffany, staring up at the stars that were coming out.

‘Well,’ said Letitia, ‘I got it out of Spells for Lovers by Anathema Bugloss, if that’s any help.’

‘That’s the one with the picture of the author sitting on a broomstick, isn’t it?’ said Tiffany. ‘Sitting on it the wrong way round, I might add. And it hasn’t got a safety strap. And no witch I’ve ever met wears goggles. And as for having a cat on it with you, that doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s a made-up name too. I’ve seen the book in the Boffo catalogue. It’s rubbish. It’s for soppy girls who think all you need to do to make magic is buy a very expensive stick with a semiprecious stone glued on the end, no offence meant. You might as well pick a stick out of the hedge and call it a wand.’

Without saying anything, Letitia walked a little way down to the hedge that lay between the field and the road. There’s always a useful stick under a hedge if you poke around enough. She waved it vaguely in the air, and it left a light blue line after it.

‘Like this?’ she said. For quite a while, there was no sound apart from the occasional hoot of an owl and, for the really good of hearing, the rustling of the bats.

‘I think it’s time we had a proper little chat, don’t you?’ said Tiffany.

Chapter 11

THE BONFIRE OF THE WITCHES

‘I TOLD YOU I ALWAYSwanted to be a witch,’ said Letitia. ‘You don’t know how hard that can be when your family lives in a great big mansion and is so old that the coat of arms has even got a few legs on it as well. All that gets in the way and, if you excuse me, I really wish that I had been born with your disadvantages. I only found out about the Boffo catalogue when I heard two of the maids giggling over it when I went into the kitchen one day. They ran away, still giggling, I might add, but they left it behind. I can’t order as much stuff as I would want to, because my maid spies on me and tells Mother. But the cook is a decent sort, so I give her money and the catalogue numbers and they get delivered to her sister in Ham-on-Rye. I can’t order anything very big, though, because the maids are always dusting and cleaning everywhere. I would really like one of the cauldrons that bubble green, but from what you tell me it’s just a joke.’

Letitia had taken a couple of other sticks from the hedge and stuck them in the ground in front of her. There was a blue glow on the tip of each one.

‘Well, for everybody else it’s a joke,’ Tiffany said, ‘but for you I expect it would produce fried chickens.’

‘Do you really think so?’ said Letitia eagerly.

‘I’m not sure I can think at all if I am upside down with my head in a bucket of sand,’ said Tiffany. ‘You know that sounds a bit like wizard magic. This trick … it was in Mistress Bugloss’s book, you say. Look, I’m sorry, but that really is boffo stuff. It’s not real. It’s just for people who think that witchcraft is all about flowers and love potions and dancing around without your drawers on – something I can’t imagine any real witch doing …’ Tiffany hesitated, because she was naturally honest, and went on, ‘Well, maybe Nanny Ogg, when the mood takes her. It’s witchcraft with all the crusts cut off, and real witchcraft is all crusts. But you took one of her silly spells for giggling housemaids and used it on me and it’s worked! Is there a real witch in your family?’

Letitia shook her head and her long blonde hair sparkled even in the moonlight. ‘I’ve never heard of one. My grandfather was an alchemist – not professionally, of course. He was the reason why the hall has no east wing any more. My mother … I can’t imagine her doing magic, can you?’

‘Her? Absolutely!’

‘Well, I’ve never seen her do any and she does mean well. She says that all she wants is the best for me. She lost all her family in a fire, don’t you know. Lost everything,’ said Letitia.

Tiffany couldn’t dislike the girl. It would be like disliking a rather baffled puppy, but she couldn’t help saying, ‘And did you mean well? You know, when you made a model of me and put it upside down in a bucket of sand?’

There must have been reservoirs in Letitia. She was never more than a teacup away from a tear.

‘Look,’ Tiffany said, ‘I don’t mind, honestly. Though frankly I wish I believed that it was just a spell! Just take it out again then, and we can forget all about it. Please don’t start crying again, it makes everything so soggy.’

Letitia sniffed. ‘Oh, it’s just that, well, I didn’t do it here. I left it at home. It’s in the library.’

The last word in that sentence tinkled in Tiffany’s head. ‘A library? With books?’ Witches were not supposed to be particularly bothered about books, but Tiffany had read every one she could. You never knew what you could get out of a book. ‘It’s a very warm night for the time of year,’ she said, ‘and your place is not too far, is it? You could be back in the tower and in bed in a couple of hours.’

For the first time since Tiffany had met her, Letitia smiled, genuinely smiled. ‘Can I go on the front this time then?’ she said.

Tiffany flew low over the downs.

The moon was well on the way to full, and it was a real harvest moon, the copper colour of blood. That was the smoke from the stubble-burning, hanging in the air. How the blue smoke from burning wheat stalks made the moon go red, she didn’t know, and she wasn’t going to fly all that way to find out.

And Letitia seemed to be in some kind of personal heaven. She chattered the whole time, which was admittedly better than the sobbing. The girl was only eight days younger than herself. Tiffany knew that, because she had taken great care to find out. But that was just numbers. It didn’t feel like that. In fact she felt old enough to be the girl’s mother. It was strange, but Petulia and Annagramma and the rest of them back in the mountains had all told her the same thing: witches grew old inside. You had to do things that needed doing but which turned your stomach like a spinning wheel. You saw things sometimes that no one should have to see. And, usually alone and often in darkness, you needed to do the things that had to be done. Out in distant villages, when a new mother was giving birth and things had run into serious trouble, you hoped that there was an old local midwife who might at least give you some moral support; but still, when it came down to it and the life-or-death decision had to be made, then it was made by you, because you were the witch. And sometimes it wasn’t a decision between a good thing and a bad thing, but a decision between two bad things: no right choices, just … choices.