I Shall Wear Midnight

‘Very interesting child, that,’ said a voice, and the Toad¹² stuck his head out from under a leaf. ‘I must say you look extremely flustered, miss.’

‘The old Baron is dead,’ said Tiffany.

‘Well, only to be expected. Long live the Baron,’ said the Toad.

‘He’s not going to live long,’ said Tiffany. ‘He’s dead.’

‘No,’ croaked the Toad. ‘It’s what you’re supposed to say. When a king dies, you have to immediately announce that there is another king. It’s important. I wonder what the new one will be like. Rob Anybody says that he’s a wet nelly who is not fit to lick your boots. And has scorned you very badly.’

Whatever the circumstances of the past, Tiffany was not going to let that go by unchallenged. ‘I don’t need anybody to lick anything for me, thank you very much. Anyway,’ she added, ‘he’s not their baron, is he? The Feegles pride themselves on not having a lord.’

‘You are correct in your submission,’ said the Toad ponderously, ‘but you must remember that they also pride themselves on having as much as possible to drink at the slightest possible excuse, which leaves them of an uncertain temper, and that the Baron quite definitely believes that he is, de facto, the owner of all the property hereabouts. A claim that stands up in law. Although I am sorry to say that I can no longer do the same. But the girl, now, she is something strange. Haven’t you noticed?’

Haven’t I noticed? Tiffany thought quickly. What should I have noticed? Amber was just a kid;¹³ she had seen her around – not so quiet as to be worrying, not so noisy as to be annoying. And that was it. But then she thought, The chickens. That was strange.

‘She can speak Feegle!’ said the Toad. ‘And I don’t mean all that crivens business; that’s just the patois. I mean the serious old-fashioned stuff that the kelda speaks, the language they spoke from wherever it was they came from before they came from there. I am sorry, with preparation I am sure I could have made a better sentence.’ He paused. ‘I don’t understand a word of Feegle myself, but the girl seems to have just picked it up. And another thing, I’ll swear she’s been trying to talk to me in Toad. I’m not much good at it myself, but a little bit of understanding did come with the … shape change, as it were.’

‘Are you saying that she understands unusual words?’ said Tiffany.

‘I’m not certain,’ said the Toad. ‘I think she understands meaning.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Tiffany. ‘I’ve always thought she was a bit simple.’

‘Simple?’ said the Toad, who seemed to be enjoying himself. ‘Well, as a lawyer I can tell you that something that looks very simple indeed can be incredibly complicated, especially if I’m being paid by the hour. The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.’

Amber poked her head out of the hole. ‘Mrs Kelda says to meet her in the chalk pit,’ she said excitedly.

There was a faint cheering coming from the chalk pit as Tiffany lowered herself gingerly through the careful camouflage.

She liked the pit. It seemed impossible to be truly unhappy there, with the damp white walls cradling her and the light of the blue day pricking through the briars. Sometimes, when she was much younger, she had seen the ancient fish swimming in and out of the chalk pit, ancient fish from the time when the Chalk was the land under the waves. The water had gone long ago, but the souls of the ghost fish hadn’t noticed. They were as armoured as knights and ancient as the chalk. But she didn’t see them any more. Perhaps your eyesight changes as you get older, she thought.

There was a strong smell of garlic. A large part of the bottom of the pit was full of snails. Feegles were walking carefully among them, painting numbers on their shells. Amber was sitting next to the kelda, with her hands clasped round her knees. Seen from above, it looked for all the world like a sheepdog trials, but with less barking and a lot more stickiness.

The kelda spotted Tiffany, and raised a tiny finger to her lips, followed by a brief nod at Amber, who was now engrossed in the proceedings. Jeannie patted the space on the other side of her, and said, ‘We are watching the lads putting our brand on the livestock, ye ken.’ There was a slight touch of strangeness to her voice. It was the kind of voice a grown-up uses when it tells a child ‘We are having fun, aren’t we?’, in case the child hasn’t reached that conclusion yet. But Amber really did look as if she was enjoying herself. It occurred to Tiffany that being around the Feegles seemed to make Amber happy.

She got the impression that the kelda wanted to keep the conversation light, so she simply asked, ‘Why mark them? Who’s going to try to steal them?’

‘Other Feegles, of course. My Rob reckons they will be queuing up to steal our snails while they are left unprotected, ye ken.’

Tiffany was mystified. ‘Why would they be unprotected?’