‘Weel,’ Rob Anybody said, ‘personally I would have liked to take them to the cleaners, the mound-digging Cromwells that they are, but I could see where that might make it a wee bit difficult for ye, so we just tied their bootlaces together. Maybe they’ll blame it on the wee mice.’
‘Look, you’re not to hurt anybody, all right? The guards have to do what they are told.’
‘Nae, they didnae,’ said Rob scornfully. ‘That’s nae errand for a warrior, doing what you’re told. And what would they have done to ye, doing what they were told? That old carlin of a mother-in-law was glaring claymores at ye the whole time, bad cess to her! Hah! Let’s see how she likes her bathwater tonight!’
The edge to his voice put Tiffany on the alert. ‘You are not to hurt anybody, do you understand? Nobody at all, Rob.’
The Big Man grumbled. ‘Och yes, miss, I’ve taken what you said on board!’
‘And you promise on your honour as a Feegle not to throw it over the side as soon as my back is turned, do you?’
Rob Anybody started grumbling again, using crackling Feegle words that she had never heard before. They sounded like curses, and once or twice, when he spat them out, smoke and sparks came out with them. He was stamping his feet too, always a sign of a Feegle at the end of his tether. ‘They came arrayed with sharp steel to dig up me home, dig up me clan and dig up me family,’ he said, and his words were all the more menacing because they were so level and quiet. Then he spat a short sentence towards the fire, which burned green for a moment when the words hit the flames.
‘I’ll no’ disobey the hag o’ the hills, ye ken, but I put ye on firm notice that if I can see a shovel near my mound again, the owner will find it shoved up his kilt blunt end first, so that he hurts his hands trying to pull it out. And that will only be the start of his problems! And if there is any clearances here, I swear on my spog that it will be us that is doing the clearing!’ He stamped up and down a bit, and then added: ‘And what is this we are hearing about ye demanding the law? We is nae friends of the law, ye ken.’
‘What about Wee Mad Arthur?’ said Tiffany.
It was almost impossible to make a Feegle look sheepish, but Rob Anybody looked as if he was about to say ‘Bah’. ‘Oh, it’s a terrible thing them gnomes did to him,’ he said, looking sad. ‘Do ye ken he washes his face every day? I mean, that sort of thing is OK when the mud gets too thick, but every day? I ask ye, how can a body stand it?’
One moment there were the Feegles, and then there was a faint whoosh, followed by a total lack of Feegles, and the next moment there was a more than adequate supply of guards. Fortunately they were the sergeant and Preston, stamping to attention.
The sergeant cleared his throat. ‘Am I addressing Miss Tiffany Aching?’ he said.
‘It looks to me as if you are, Brian,’ said Tiffany, ‘but you be the judge.’
The sergeant looked around quickly and then leaned closer. ‘Please, Tiff,’ he whispered, ‘it’s all gone serious on us.’ He straightened up quickly and then said, far louder than was necessary, ‘Miss Tiffany Aching! I am commanded by my lord the Baron to inform you that it is his command that you must stay within the irons of the castle—’
‘The what?’ said Tiffany.
Wordlessly, his eyes on the ceiling, the sergeant handed her a piece of parchment.
‘Oh, you mean the environs,’ she said. ‘That means the castle and the places around it too,’ she told him helpfully. ‘But I thought the Baron wanted me to leave?’
‘Look, I’m just reading out what it says here, Tiff, and I am ordered to lock your broomstick in the dungeon.’
‘That’s an impressive errand that you have there, Officer. It’s leaning against the wall, help yourself.’
The sergeant looked relieved. ‘You’re not going to make any … trouble?’ he said.
Tiffany shook her head. ‘Not at all, Sergeant. I have no quarrel with a man who is only doing his duty.’
The sergeant walked cautiously up to the broomstick. They all knew it, of course; they had seen it going overhead, and generally only just overhead, practically every day. But he hesitated, with his hand a few inches from the wood. ‘Er, what happens when I touch it?’ he said.
‘Oh, then it’s ready to fly,’ said Tiffany.
The sergeant’s hand very slowly drew back from the vicinity, or possibly the environs, of the broomstick. ‘But it won’t fly for me, right?’ he said in a voice full of air-sickness and pleading.
‘Oh, not very far or very high, probably,’ said Tiffany, without looking round. The sergeant was well known to get vertigo simply by standing on a chair. She walked over to him and picked up the stick. ‘Brian, what were your orders if I refused to obey your orders, if you see what I mean?’
‘I was supposed to arrest you!’
‘What? And lock me up in the dungeon?’
The sergeant winced. ‘You know I wouldn’t want to do that,’ he said. ‘Some of us are grateful, and we all knew that poor old Mrs Coble was as drunk as a skunk, poor woman.’
‘Then I won’t put you to the trouble,’ said Tiffany. ‘So why don’t I put this broomstick, which you seem so worried about, down in the dungeon and lock it in. Then I won’t be going anywhere, yes?’
Relief flooded the sergeant’s face, and as they walked down the stone steps to the dungeon he lowered his voice and said, ‘It’s not me, you understand, it’s them upstairs. It seems like her grace is calling the shots now.’
Tiffany hadn’t seen very many dungeons, but people said that the one in the castle was pretty good by dungeon standards and would probably earn at least five ball and chains if anybody ever decided to write a Good Dungeon Guide. It was spacious and well-drained, with a handy gutter right down the middle, which ended up in the inevitable round hole, which did not smell very bad on, as it were, the whole.
Neither did the goats, which unfolded themselves from their snug beds in piles of straw and watched her through slot eyes in case she did anything interesting, such as feeding them. They didn’t stop eating, because being goats, they were already eating their dinner for the second time.
The dungeon had two entrances. One went straight outdoors: it was probably there to drag the prisoners in by, back in the old days, because that would save having to pull them across the great hall, getting the floor all mucky with blood and mud.
These days the dungeon was mostly used as a goat shed and, on racks higher up – high enough to be out of reach of all but the most determined goat – an apple store.
Tiffany lifted the broomstick up onto the lowest apple rack, while the sergeant petted one of the goats, taking care not to look up in case it made him feel dizzy. That meant he was entirely unprepared when Tiffany pushed him back out of the doorway, took the keys out of the lock, swung herself back into the dungeon and locked the door on the inside.
‘I’m sorry, Brian, but, you see, it is you. Not just you, of course, and not even mostly you, and it was rather unfair of me to take advantage of you, but if I’m going to be treated like a criminal, I might as well act like one.’
Brian shook his head. ‘We do have another key, you know.’
‘Hard to use it if I blocked the keyhole,’ said Tiffany, ‘but look on the bright side. I’m under lock and key, which I think some people would rather like, so all you are worried about is the fine detail. You see, I think you might be looking at this the wrong way round. I’m safe in a dungeon. I haven’t been locked away from you, the rest of you have been locked away from me.’ Brian looked as if he was about to cry and she thought, No, I can’t do it. He’s always been decent to me. He’s trying to be decent now. Just because I’m cleverer than he is doesn’t mean that he should lose his job. And besides, I already know the way out of here. That’s the thing about people who have dungeons; they don’t spend enough time in them themselves. She handed the keys back.
His face brightened with relief. ‘Obviously we will bring you food and water,’ he said. ‘You can’t live on apples all the time!’
Tiffany sat down on the straw. ‘You know, it’s quite cosy in here. It’s funny how goat burps make everything sort of warm and comfortable. No, I won’t eat the apples, but some of them do need turning or else they will rot, so I will take care of that while I’m in here too. Of course, when I’m locked in here I can’t be out there. I can’t make medicines. I can’t clip toenails. I can’t help. How is your old mum’s leg these days? Still well, I hope? Would you mind leaving now, please, because I’d like to use the hole.’
She heard his boots on the stairs. It had been a bit cruel, but what else could she have done? She looked around and lifted up a pile of very old and very dirty straw that hadn’t been touched for a long time. All sorts of things crawled, hopped or slithered away. Around her, now that the coast was clear, Feegle heads rose, bits of straw dropping off them.
‘Fetch my lawyer, please,’ Tiffany said brightly. ‘I think he’s going to like working here …’
The Toad turned out to be quite enthusiastic, for a lawyer who knew that he was going to be paid in beetles.
‘I think we will start with wrongful imprisonment. Judges don’t like that sort of thing. If anyone’s going to be put in prison, they like to be the ones who do it.’
‘Er, actually I locked myself in,’ said Tiffany. ‘Does that count?’
‘I wouldn’t worry about that at the moment. You were under duress, your freedom of movement was being curtailed and you were put in fear.’
‘I certainly was not! I was extremely angry!’
The Toad slapped a claw down on an escaping centipede. ‘You were interrogated by two members of the aristocracy in the presence of four armed men, yes? Nobody warned you? Nobody read you your rights? And you say the Baron apparently believes on no evidence that you killed his father, and the cook, and stole some money?’
‘I think Roland’s trying hard not to believe it,’ said Tiffany. ‘Someone has told him a lie.’
‘Then we must challenge it, indeed we must. He can’t go around making allegations of murder when they can’t be substantiated. He can get into serious trouble for that!’
‘Oh,’ said Tiffany, ‘I don’t want any harm to come to him!’ It is hard to see when the Toad is smiling, so Tiffany had to take a guess. ‘Did I say something funny?’
‘Not funny at all, not really, but in its way rather sad and rather droll,’ said the Toad. ‘Droll, in this case, meaning somewhat bittersweet. This young man is making accusations against you which could, if true, lead to you being executed in many places in this world, and yet you do not wish him to be put to any inconvenience?’
‘I know it’s soppy, but the Duchess is pushing him all the time, and the girl he’s going to marry is as wet as—’ She stopped. There were footfalls on the stone stairs that led from the hall to the dungeon, and they certainly did not have the heavy ring of guards’ hobnails.
It was Letitia, the bride-to-be, all in white and all in tears. She reached the bars of Tiffany’s cell, hung onto them, and carried on crying: not big sobs, but just an endless snivelling, nose-dripping, fumbling-in-the-sleeve-for-the-lace-hanky-that-is-already-totally-soaking-wet kind of tears.
The girl didn’t really look at Tiffany, just sobbed in her general direction. ‘I’m so sorry! I really am very sorry! What can you think of me?’
And there, right there, was the drawback of being a witch. Here was a person whose mere existence had led Tiffany, one evening, to wonder about that whole business of sticking pins into a wax figure. She hadn’t actually done it, because it was something that you shouldn’t do, something that witches greatly frowned on, and because it was cruel and dangerous, and above all because she hadn’t been able to find any pins.
And now the wretched creature was in some kind of agony, so distraught that modesty and dignity were all being washed away in a rolling flood of gummy tears. How could they not wash away hatred as well? And, in truth, there had never been all that much hatred, more of a kind of miffed feeling. She’d known all along that she’d never be a lady, not without the long blonde hair. It was totally against the whole book of fairytales. She just hadn’t liked being rushed into accepting it.
‘I really never wanted things to happen like this!’ gulped Letitia. ‘I really am very, very sorry, I don’t know what I could’ve been thinking about!’ And so many tears, rolling down that silly, lacy dress and – oh no, there was a perfect snot balloon on a perfect nose.
Tiffany watched in fascinated horror as the weeping girl had a great bubbling blow and – oh no, she wasn’t going to, was she? Yes, she was. Yes. She squeezed out the dripping handkerchief onto the floor, which was already wet from the incessant crying.
‘Look, I’m sure things can’t be as bad as all that,’ said Tiffany, trying not to hear the ghastly blobby noises on the stone. ‘If you would only stop crying for a moment, I’m sure everything can be sorted out, whatever it is.’
This caused more tears and some actual, genuine, old-fashioned sobs, the kind you never heard in real life – well, at least, up until now. Tiffany knew that when people cried, they said boo-hoo – or at least, that’s how it was written down in books. No one said it in real life. But Letitia did, while projectile crying all over the steps. There was something else there too, and Tiffany caught the spill words as they were well and truly spilled, and read them as, somewhat soggy, they landed in her brain.
She thought, Oh, really? But before she could say anything, there was a clattering on the steps again. Roland, the Duchess, and one of her guards came hurrying down, followed by Brian, who had clearly been getting very annoyed about other people’s guards clattering on his home cobbles, and so was making sure that whenever a clattering was taking place, he was fully involved.
Roland skidded on the damp patch, and threw his arms protectively around Letitia, who squelched and oozed slightly. The Duchess loomed over the pair of them, which left little looming space available for the guards, who had to put up with looking angrily at one another.
‘What have you done to her?’ Roland demanded. ‘How did you lure her down here?’
The Toad cleared his throat and Tiffany gave him an undignified nudge with her boot. ‘Don’t you say a word, you amphibian,’ she hissed. He might be her lawyer, but if the Duchess saw a toad acting as her legal counsel, then it could only make things worse.
As it happens, her not seeing the Toad did make things worse, because the Duchess screamed, ‘Did you hear that? Is there no end to her insolence? She called me an amphibian.’
Tiffany was about to say, ‘I didn’t mean you, I meant the other amphibian,’ but stopped herself in time. She sat down, one hand shovelling straw over the Toad and turned to Roland. ‘Which question would you like me not to answer first?’
