I Shall Wear Midnight (Discworld 38)

‘Amber,’ she said carefully, ‘you know how to feed chickens, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes, miss.’

‘Well, go and feed ours, will you? There’s grain in the barn.’

‘Your mum fed them hours ago—’ her father began, but Tiffany dragged him away quickly.

‘When did this happen?’ she asked, watching Amber walking obediently into the barn.

‘Some time last night. Mrs Petty told me. He was beaten badly. In that rackety old barn. Right where we were sitting last night.’

‘Mrs Petty went back? After everything that happened? What does she see in him?’

Mr Aching gave a shrug. ‘He is her husband.’

‘But everyone knows he beats her up!’

Her father looked a bit embarrassed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose to some women any husband is better than none.’

Tiffany opened her mouth to reply, looked into her father’s eyes and saw the truth of what he had said. She had seen some of them up in the mountains, worn out by too many children and not enough money. Of course, if they knew Nanny Ogg, something could be done about the children at least, but you still found the families who sometimes, in order to put food on the table, had to sell the chairs. And there was never anything you could do about it.

‘Mr Petty wasn’t beaten up, Dad, although it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if he was. I found him trying to hang himself, and I cut him down.’

‘He’s got two broken ribs, and bruises all over him.’

‘It was a long way down, Dad – he was choking to death! What should I have done? Let him swing? He has lived to see another day, whether he deserves to or not! It’s not my job to be an executioner! There was a bouquet, Dad! Weeds and nettles! His hands were swollen with nettle stings! There’s at least some part of him that deserves to live, do you see?’

‘But you did steal the baby away.’

‘No, Dad, I stole away with the baby. Listen, Dad, do get it right. I buried the child, which was dead. I saved the man who was dying. I did those things, Dad. People might not understand – might make up stories. I don’t care. You do the job that is in front of you.’

There was a clucking, and Amber walked across the yard with the chickens following her in a line. The clucking was being done by Amber, and as Tiffany and her father watched, the chickens marched back and forth as if under the command of a drill sergeant. The girl was giggling to herself in between clucks, and after managing to get the chickens to walk solemnly in a circle she looked up at Tiffany and her father as if nothing had happened and led the fowls back into the barn.

After a pause Tiffany’s father said, ‘That did just happen, didn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘I have no idea why.’

‘I’ve been talking to some of the other lads,’ said her father, ‘and your mother has been talking to the women. We’ll keep an eye on the Pettys. Things have been let go that shouldn’t have. People can’t expect to leave everything to you. People mustn’t think that you can fix everything, and if you’ll take my advice, neither will you. There are some things a whole village has to do.’

‘Thanks, Dad,’ said Tiffany, ‘but I think I had better go and see to the Baron now.’

Tiffany could only just remember ever seeing the Baron as a well man. Nor did anyone seem to know what was wrong with him. But, like many other invalids she had seen, he somehow kept on going, living in a holding pattern and waiting to die.

She had heard one of the villagers call him a creaking door which never slammed; he was getting worse now, and in her opinion it was not going to be very long before his life slammed shut.

But she could take away the pain, and even frighten it a little so it wouldn’t come back for a while.

Tiffany hurried to the castle. The nurse, Miss Spruce, was waiting when she arrived, and her face was pale.

‘It’s not one of his good days,’ she said, then added with a modest little smile, ‘I have been praying for him all morning.’

‘I’m sure that was very kind of you,’ said Tiffany. She had taken care to keep any sarcasm out of her voice, but she got a frown from the nurse anyway.

The room Tiffany was ushered into smelled like sickrooms everywhere: all too much of people, and not enough air. The nurse stood in the doorway as if she was on guard. Tiffany could feel her permanently suspicious gaze on the back of her neck. There was more and more of that sort of attitude about. Sometimes you got wandering preachers around who didn’t like witches, and people would listen to them. It seemed to Tiffany that people lived in a very strange world sometimes. Everybody knew, in some mysterious way, that witches ran away with babies and blighted crops, and all the other nonsense. And at the same time, they would come running to the witch when they needed help.

The Baron lay in a tangle of sheets, his face grey, his hair totally white now, with little pink patches where it had all gone. He looked neat, though. He had always been a neat man, and every morning one of the guards would come and give him a shave. It cheered him up, as far as anyone could tell, but right now he looked straight through Tiffany. She was used to this; the Baron was what they called ‘a man of the old school’. He was proud and did not have the best of tempers, but he would stand up for himself at all times. To him, the pain was a bully, and what do you do to bullies? You stood up to them, because they always ran away in the end. But the pain didn’t know about that rule. It just bullied even more. And the Baron lay with thin white lips; Tiffany could hear him not screaming.

Now, she sat down on a stool beside him, flexed her fingers, took a deep breath, and then received the pain, calling it out of the wasted body and putting it into the invisible ball just above her shoulder.