I Shall Wear Midnight

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.