I Shall Wear Midnight

When they were at a decent height, Tiffany looked at the weather. There were clouds above the mountains, and the occasional flash of summer lightning. She could hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. You were never far from a thunderstorm in the mountains. The mist had lifted, and the moon was up; it was a perfect night. And there was a breeze. She had hoped for this. And Preston had his arms around her waist; she wasn’t sure whether she had hoped for that or not.

They were well down onto the plains at the foot of the Chalk now, and even by moonlight Tiffany could see dark rectangles where earlier fields had been cleared. The men were always meticulous about not letting the fires get out of hand; nobody wanted wildfire — there was no telling what that would burn. The field they reached was the very last one. They always called it the King. Usually when the King was burned, half the village was waiting to catch any rabbits that fled the flames. That should have happened today, but everybody had been … otherwise occupied.

The chicken houses and the pigsty were in a field just above it at the top of a bank, and it was said that the King grew such bountiful crops because the men found it much easier to cart the mulch onto the King rather than take it all to the lower fields.

They landed by the pigsties, to the usual ferocious screaming of piglets, who believed that no matter what is actually happening, the world is trying to saw them in half.

She sniffed. The air smelled of pig; she was sure, absolutely sure, that she would nevertheless smell the ghost if and when he was here. Mucky though they were, the pigs nevertheless had a natural smell; the smell of the ghost, on the other hand, would make a pig smell like violets by comparison. She shuddered. The wind was getting up.

‘Are you sure you can kill it?’ whispered Preston.

‘I think I can make it kill itself. And Preston, I absolutely forbid you to help me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Preston. ‘Temporal power, you understand. You can’t give me orders, Miss Aching, if that’s all right by you.’

‘You mean your sense of duty and your obedience to your commander means that you must help me?’ she said.

‘Well, yes, miss,’ said Preston, ‘and a few other considerations.’

‘Then I really need you, Preston, I really do. I think I could do this myself, but it will make it so much easier if you help me. What I want you to do is—’

She was almost certain that the ghost would not be able to overhear, but she lowered her voice anyway, and Preston absorbed her words without blinking and simply said, ‘That sounds pretty straightforward, miss. You can rely on the temporal power.’

‘Yuck! How did I end up here?’

Something grey and sticky and smelling very much of pig and beer tried to pull itself over the pigsty wall. Tiffany knew it was Roland, but only because it was highly improbable that two bridegrooms had been thrown into the pigsty tonight. And he rose like something nasty from the swamp, dripping … well, just dripping; there was hardly any necessity to go into details. Bits of him splashed off.

He hiccupped. ‘There appears to be an enormous pig in my bedroom, and it would seem that I have mislaid my trousers,’ he said, his voice baffled by alcohol. The young Baron peered around, understanding not so much dawning as bursting. ‘I don’t think this is my bedroom, is it?’ he said, and slowly slipped back into the sty.

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.