I Shall Wear Midnight

‘The past was only yesterday,’ said Tiffany, ‘and it would be just as well if you remembered that there was a time when I called you Roland and you called me Tiffany, don’t you think?’ She reached up to her neck and pulled off the necklace with the silver horse that he had given her. It felt like a hundred years ago now, but this necklace had been important. She had even stood up to Granny Weatherwax for this necklace! And now she held the necklace like an accusation. ‘The past needs to be remembered. If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going.’

The sergeant looked from one to the other, and with that instinct for survival that any soldier develops by the time he’s become a sergeant, decided to leave the room before things started getting thrown.

‘I’ll just go and see to the, er … the … things that need seeing to, if that’s OK?’ he said, opening and closing the door so quickly that it slammed back tightly on the last syllable. Roland stared at it for a moment, and then turned.

‘I know where I am, Miss Aching. I am standing in my father’s shoes, and he is dead. I have been running this estate for years, but everything I did, I did in his name. Why did he die, Miss Aching? He wasn’t all that old. I thought you could do magic!’

Tiffany looked down at Amber, who was listening with interest. ‘Is this best discussed later?’ she said. ‘You wanted your men to bring you this girl, and here she is, healthy in mind and body. And I did not, as you say, give her to the fairies: she was a guest of the Nac Mac Feegle, whose help you have had on more than one occasion. And she went back there of her own free will.’ She looked carefully at Roland’s face, and said, ‘You don’t remember them, do you?’

She could see that he didn’t, but his mind was struggling with the fact that there was definitely something that he should have remembered. He was a prisoner of the Fairy Queen, Tiffany reminded herself. Forgetfulness can be a blessing, but I wonder what horrors were in his mind when the Pettys told him that she had taken their girl to the Feegles. To fairies. How could I imagine what he felt?

She softened her voice a little. ‘You remember something vague about fairies, yes? Nothing bad, I hope, but nothing very clear, as if perhaps it was something you read in a book, or a story that somebody told you when you were little. Am I right?’

He glowered at her, but the spill word that he had strangled on his lips told her that she was right.

‘They call it the last gift,’ she said. ‘It’s part of the soothings. It is for when it is best for everybody that you forget things that were too awful, and also the things that were too wonderful. I’m telling you this, my lord, because Roland is still in there somewhere. By tomorrow you will forget even what I have told you. I don’t know how it works, but it works for nearly everybody.’

‘You took the child from her parents! They came to see me as soon as I arrived this morning! Everyone came to see me this morning! Did you kill my father? Did you steal money from him? Did you try to throttle old Petty? Did you beat him with nettles? Did you fill his cottage with demons? I can’t believe I just asked you that question, but Mrs Petty appears to think so! Personally, I don’t know what to think, especially since some fairy woman might be messing around with my thoughts! Do you understand me?’

While Tiffany was trying to put together some kind of coherent answer, he flopped down in the ancient chair behind the desk and sighed.

‘I have been told you were standing over my father with a poker in your hand, and that you demanded money from him,’ he said sadly.

‘That’s not true!’

‘And would you tell me if it was?’

‘No! Because there never would be a was! I would never do such a thing! Well, perhaps I was standing over him …’

‘Ah-ha!’

‘Don’t you dare ah-ha me, Roland, don’t you dare! Look, I know people have been telling you things, but they are not true.’

‘But you just admitted that you were standing over him, yes?’

‘It’s simply that he wanted me to show him how I keep my hands clean!’ She regretted this as soon as she said it. It was true, but what did that matter? It didn’t sound true. ‘Look, I can see that it—’

‘And you didn’t steal a bag of money?’

‘No!’

‘And you don’t know anything about a bag of money?’

‘Yes, your father asked me to take one out of the metal chest. He wanted to—’

Roland interrupted her. ‘Where is that money now?’ His voice was flat and without expression.

‘I have no idea,’ said Tiffany. And as his mouth opened again, she shouted, ‘No! You will listen, understand? Sit there and listen! I attended your father for the better part of two years. I liked the old man and I would do nothing to hurt him or you. He died when it was his time to die. When that time comes, there is nothing anyone can do.’

‘Then what is magic for?’