I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett

‘Well, that’s some comfort anyway,’ said Tiffany. ‘Imagine the embarrassment otherwise.’ She smiled at Preston’s puzzlement. ‘And his funeral is tomorrow and that’s why I should see him today, Preston, and right now. Please? Right now, he is more important than his son.’

Tiffany felt people’s eyes on her as she strode towards the crypt with Preston almost running to keep up and clattering down the long steps after her. She felt a bit sorry for him, because he had always been kind and respectful, but no one was to think that she was being led anywhere by a guard. There had been enough of that. The looks that people gave her seemed rather more frightened than angry, and she didn’t know if this was a good sign or not.

At the bottom of the steps she took a deep breath. There was just the usual smell of the crypt, chilly with a hint of potatoes. She smiled a little smile of self-congratulation. And there was the Baron, lying peacefully just as she had left him, with his hands crossed on his chest, looking for all the world as though he was sleeping.

‘They thought I was doing witchcraft down here, didn’t they, Preston?’ she said.

‘There was some gossip, yes, miss.’

‘Well, I was. Your granny taught you about the care of the dead, right? So you know it’s not right for the dead to be too long in the land of the living. The weather is warm, and the summer has been hot, and the stones that could be as chilly as the grave are not as chilly as all that. So, Preston, go and get me two pails of water, please.’ She sat quietly by the side of the slab as he scurried away.

Earth and salt and two coins for the ferryman, those were the things that you gave to the dead, and you watched and listened like the mother of a newborn baby …

Preston came back, carrying two large pails with – she was pleased to see – only a limited amount of slopping. He put them down quickly and turned to go.

‘No, stay here, Preston,’ she commanded. ‘I want you to see what I do, so that if anyone asks, you can tell them the truth.’

The guard nodded mutely. She was impressed. She placed one of the buckets beside the slab and knelt down by it, put one hand in the chilly bucket, pressed the other hand against the stone of the slab and whispered to herself, ‘Balance is everything.’

Anger helped. It was amazing how useful it could be, if you saved it up until it could do some good, just as she had told Letitia. She heard the young guard gasp as the water in the bucket began to steam, and then to bubble.

He jumped to his feet. ‘I understand, miss! I’ll take the boiling bucket away and bring you another cold one, yes?’

Three buckets of boiling water had been tipped away by the time the air in the crypt once again had the chill of the midwinter. Tiffany walked up the steps with her teeth very nearly chattering. ‘My granny would have loved to be able to do something like that,’ Preston whispered. ‘She always said the dead don’t like the heat. You put cold into the stone, right?’

‘Actually, I moved heat out of the slab and the air and put it in the bucket of water,’ said Tiffany. ‘It’s not exactly magic. It’s just a … a skill. You just have to be a witch to do it, that’s all.’

Preston sighed. ‘I cured my granny’s chickens of fowl crop. I had to cut them open to clean up the mess, and then I sewed them up again. Not one of them died. And then when my mum’s dog got run over by a wagon, I cleaned him up, pushed all the bits back and he ended up right as rain except for the leg I couldn’t save, but I carved him a wooden one, with a leather harness and everything, and he still chases wagons!’

Tiffany tried not to look doubtful. ‘Cutting into chickens to cure fowl crop hardly ever works,’ she said. ‘I know a pig witch who treats chickens when necessary, and she said it never worked for her.’

‘Ah, but maybe she didn’t have the knowin’ of twister root,’ said Preston cheerfully. ‘If you mix the juice with a little pennyroyal, they heal really well. My granny had the knowing of the roots and she passed it on to me.’

‘Well,’ said Tiffany, ‘if you can sew up a chicken’s gizzard then you could mend a broken heart. Listen, Preston, why don’t you get yourself apprenticed to be a doctor?’

They had reached the door to the Baron’s study. Preston knocked on it and then opened it for Tiffany. ‘It’s them letters you get to put after your name,’ he whispered. ‘They are very expensive letters! It might not cost money to become a witch, miss, but when you need them letters, oh, don’t you need that money!’

Roland was standing facing the door when Tiffany stepped in, and his mouth was full of spill words, tumbling over themselves not to be said. He did manage to say, ‘Er, Miss Aching … I mean, Tiffany, my fiancée assures me that we are all the victim of a magical plot aimed at your good self. I do hope you will forgive any misunderstanding on our part, and I trust that we have not inconvenienced you too much, and may I add that I take some heart from the fact that you were clearly able to escape from our little dungeon. Er …’

Tiffany wanted to shout, ‘Roland, do you remember that we first met when I was four years old and you were seven, running around in the dust with only our vests on? I liked you better when you didn’t talk like some old lawyer with a broomstick stuck up his bum. You sound as if you are addressing a public meeting.’ But instead, she said, ‘Did Letitia tell you everything?’

Roland looked sheepish. ‘I rather suspect that she did not, Tiffany, but she was very forthright. I may go so far as to say that she was emphatic.’ Tiffany tried not to smile. He looked like a man who was beginning to understand some of the facts of married life. He cleared his throat. ‘She tells me that we have been a victim of some kind of magical disease, which is currently trapped inside a book in Keepsake Hall?’ It certainly sounded like a question, and she wasn’t surprised he was puzzled.

‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘And … apparently, everything is all right now she has taken your head out of a bucket of sand.’ He looked truly lost at this point, and Tiffany didn’t blame him.

‘I think things may have got a bit garbled,’ she said diplomatically.

‘And she tells me she is going to be a witch.’ He looked a little miserable at this point. Tiffany felt sorry for him, but not very much.

‘Well, I think she’s got the basic talent. It’s up to her how much further she wants to take it.’

‘I don’t know what her mother will say.’

Tiffany burst out laughing. ‘Well, you can tell the Duchess that Queen Magrat of Lancre is a witch. It’s no secret. Obviously the queening has to come first, but she is one of the best there is when it comes to potions.’

‘Really? ‘ said Roland. ‘The King and Queen of Lancre have graciously accepted an invitation to our wedding.’ And Tiffany was sure she could see his mind working. In this strange chess game that was nobility, a real live queen beat just about everybody, which meant that the Duchess would have to curtsy until her knees clicked. She saw the spill words: That would of course be very unfortunate. Amazingly, Roland could be careful even with his spill words. However, he couldn’t stop the little grin.

‘Your father gave me fifteen Ankh-Morpork dollars in real gold. It was a gift. Do you believe me?’

He saw the look in her eye, and said, ‘Yes!’ immediately.

‘Good,’ said Tiffany. ‘Then find out where the nurse went.’

Some small part of broomstick might still have been in Roland’s bum when he said, ‘Do you think my father understood the full worth of what he was giving you?’

‘His mind was as clear as water up until the end, you know that. You can trust him, just as you can trust me, and you can trust me now when I say to you that I will marry you.’

Her hand clamped itself over her mouth just too late. Where had that come from? And he looked as shocked as she felt.

He spoke first, loudly and firmly to drive away the silence. ‘I didn’t quite hear what you just said, Tiffany … I expect all your hard work in recent days has overwhelmed your sensibilities in some way. I think we would all be a lot happier if we knew that you are having a good rest. I … love Letitia, you know. She is not very, well, complicated, but I would do anything for her. When she is happy, that makes me happy. And generally speaking, I am not very good at happy.’ She saw a tear trickle down his face and, unable to stop herself, handed him a reasonably clean handkerchief. He took it and tried to blow his nose, laugh and cry all at the same time. ‘And you, Tiffany, I am very fond of, really fond of … but it’s as if you have a handkerchief for the whole world. You are smart. No, don’t shake your head. You are smart. I remember once, when we were younger, you were fascinated by the word “onomatopoeia”. Like making a name or a word from a sound, like cuckoo or hum or … ?’

‘Jangle?’ said Tiffany, before she could stop herself.

‘That’s right, and I remember that you said “humdrum” was the sound that boredom made, because it sounded like a very tired fly buzzing at the closed window of an old attic room on a boiling hot summer’s day. And I thought, I couldn’t understand that! It makes no sense to me, and I know you are clever and it makes sense to you. I think you need a special kind of head to think like that. And a special kind of clever. And I haven’t got that kind of head.’

‘What sound does kindness make?’ said Tiffany.

‘I know what kindness is, but I can’t imagine it making a noise. There you go again! I just don’t have the head that lives in a world where kindness has its own sound. I have a head that lives in a world where two and two makes four. It must be very interesting, and I envy you like hell. But I think I understand Letitia. Letitia is uncomplicated, if you see what I mean.’

A girl who once exorcized a noisy ghost from the privy as if it was just another chore, Tiffany thought. Well, good luck with that one, sir. But she didn’t say it out loud. Instead, she said, ‘I think you have made a very wise match, Roland.’ To her surprise, he looked relieved, and went behind his desk again as a soldier might hide behind the battlements.

‘This afternoon, some of the more distant guests will be arriving here for the funeral tomorrow, and indeed some will be staying on for the wedding. Fortuitously’ – that was another little piece of broom handle – ‘Pastor Egg is passing through on the circuit, and has kindly agreed to say a few good words over my father, and he will remain with us as our guest to officiate at the wedding. He is a member of a modern Omnian sect. My future mother-in-law approves of the Omnians but, regrettably, not of this sect, so that is all a little strained.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Moreover, I understand he is fresh from the city, and as you know, city preachers don’t always do well here.27

‘I would deem it a great favour, Tiffany, if you can help in any way to prevent any little difficulties and disturbances, especially those of an occult nature, in the trying days to come. Please? There are enough stories already going about.’

Tiffany was still blushing after her outburst. She nodded and managed to say, ‘Look, about what I just said back then, I didn’t—’

She stopped, because Roland had raised a hand. ‘This is a bewildering time for all of us. There’s a reason for all the superstitions. The time around weddings and funerals is fraught with stress for all concerned, except in the case of the funeral, for the chief, as it were, player,’ he said. ‘Let us just be calm and careful. I’m very pleased that Letitia likes you. I don’t think she has many friends. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more arrangements to supervise.’

* * *

Tiffany’s own voice still bounced around in her head as she walked out of the room. Why had she said that about marrying? She’d always thought it was going to be true. Well, when she was a bit younger she had thought it was going to be true, but all that was past, wasn’t it? Yes, it was! And to come out with something as wet and stupid as that was so embarrassing.

And where was she going now? Well, there were plenty of things to do, there always were. There was no end to the wanting. She was halfway across the hall when one of the maids approached her nervously and told her that Miss Letitia wanted to see her in her room.

The girl was sitting on her bed, twisting a handkerchief – a clean one, Tiffany was pleased to see – and looking worried, which was to say more worried than her usual expression, which was that of a hamster that had had its treadmill stopped.

‘So kind of you to come, Tiffany. Can I have a private word?’ Tiffany looked around. There was no one else there. ‘Privately,’ said Letitia, and gave the handkerchief another twist.

Hasn’t got many friends of her own age, Tiffany thought. I bet she wasn’t allowed to play with the village children. Doesn’t get out much. Getting married in a couple of days. Oh dear. It wasn’t a very difficult conclusion to reach. A tortoise with a bad leg could have jumped to it. And then there was Roland. Kidnapped by the Queen of the Elves, held in her nasty country for ages without growing older, bullied by his aunts, worried sick about his elderly father, finds it necessary to act as if he is twenty years older than he really is. Oh dear.

‘How can I help you?’ she said brightly.

Letitia cleared her throat. ‘After the wedding we will have a honeymoon,’ she said, her face shading to a delicate pink. ‘What exactly is supposed to happen?’ The last few words were mumbled quickly, Tiffany noticed.

‘Do you have any … aunts?’ she asked. Aunts were generally good at this sort of thing. Letitia shook her head. ‘Have you tried talking about it with your mother?’ Tiffany tried, and Letitia turned on her a face that was as red as a boiled lobster.

‘Would you talk about this sort of thing with my mother?’

‘I can see the problem. Well, broadly speaking, and I don’t speak exactly as an expert here …’ But she was.28 A witch couldn’t help being some kind of expert as to the ways people came and entered the world; by the time she was twelve the older witches had trusted her to go out to a birth by herself. Besides, she had helped lambs to be born, even when she was quite small. It came naturally, as Nanny Ogg said, although not as naturally as you might think. She remembered Mr and Mrs Hamper, quite a decent couple who had three children in a row before they worked out what was causing it. Ever since then she had tried to have a chat with the village girls of a certain age, just to be on the safe side.

Letitia listened like someone who was going to make notes afterwards, and possibly get tested on Friday. She didn’t ask any questions until about halfway through, when she said, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I’m pretty certain,’ said Tiffany.

‘Well, er, it sounds reasonably straightforward. Of course, I suppose boys know all about this sort of thing … Why are you laughing?’