I Shall Wear Midnight

She smelled the ghost. Over and above the mix of smells coming from the pigsty it stood out like a fox among chickens. And now the ghost spoke, in a voice of horror and decay. I can feel you here, witch, and others too. I do not care about them, but this new body, while not very robust, has … a permanent agenda of its own. I am strong. I am coming. You cannot save everybody. I doubt if your fiendish flying stick can carry four people. Who will you leave behind? Why not leave them all? Why not leave the tiresome rival, the boy who spurned you, and the persistent young man? Oh, I know how you think, witch!

But I don’t think that way, Tiffany thought to herself. Oh, I might have liked to see Roland in the pigsty, but people aren’t just people, they are people surrounded by circumstances.

But you aren’t. You’re not even people any more.

Beside her, with a horrible sucking noise, Preston pulled Roland out of the pigsty, against the protest of the sow. How lucky for both of them that they couldn’t hear the voice.

She paused. Four people? The tiresome rival? But there was only herself, Roland and Preston, wasn’t there?

She looked towards the far end of the field, in the moon shadow of the castle. A white figure was running towards them at speed.

It had to be Letitia. Nobody around here wore so much billowing white all the time. Tiffany’s mind spun with the algebra of tactics.

‘Preston, off you go. Take the broomstick.’

Preston nodded and then saluted, with a grin. ‘At your service, miss.’

Letitia arrived in a flurry and expensive white slippers. She stopped dead when she saw Roland, who was sober enough to try to

cover, with his hands, what Tiffany knew she would always now think of as his passionate parts. This simply made a squelching noise, since he was thickly encrusted in pig muck.

‘One of his chums told me they threw him in the pigsty for a laugh!’ Letitia said indignantly. ‘And they call themselves his friends!’

‘I think they think that’s what friends are for,’ said Tiffany absentmindedly. To herself she thought, Is this going to work? Have I overlooked something? Have I understood what I should do? Who do I think I’m talking to? I suppose I’m looking for a sign, just a sign.

There was a rustling noise. She looked down. A hare looked up at her and then, without panicking, lost herself in the stubbles.

‘I’ll take that as a yes, then,’ said Tiffany, and felt panicked herself. After all, was that an omen, or was it just a hare who was old enough not to run instantly when she saw people? And it wasn’t good manners, she was sure, to ask for a second sign to tell you if the first sign wasn’t just a coincidence, was it?

At this point, this very point, Roland started to sing, possibly because of drink, but also perhaps because Letitia was industriously wiping him down while keeping her eyes closed so that, as an unmarried woman, she wouldn’t see anything unseemly or surprising. And the song that Roland sang went: ‘Tis pleasant and delightful on the bright summer’s morn, to see the fields and the meadows all covered in corn, and the small birds were singing on every green spray, and the larks they sang melodious, at the dawning of the day …’ He paused. ‘My father used to sing that quite a lot when we walked in these fields …’ he said. He was at that stage when drunken men started to cry, and the tears left little trails of pink behind as the muck was washed from his cheeks.

But Tiffany thought, Thank you. An omen was an omen. You picked the ones that worked. And this was the big field, the field where they burned the last of the stubbles. And the hare runs into the fire. Oh, yes, the omens. They were always so important.

‘Listen to me, both of you. I am not going to be argued with by you, because you, Roland, are rascally drunk and you, Letitia, are a witch’ – Letitia beamed at that point – ‘who is junior to me, and therefore both of you will do what I tell you. And that way, all of us may get back to the castle alive.’

They both stopped and listened, Roland swaying gently.