The Shepherd's Crown (12 page)

‘That’s where they have the witches,’ said his wife. She made a face.

‘Well,’ Mr Dove said, ‘that’s where he wants to go.’ He paused, and added, ‘He said the wind is blowing him there.’

Battling into a bitter headwind on her long journey back to her parents’ farm, Tiffany felt that there was altogether too much wind in and around Lancre. Still, at least it wasn’t raining, she
told herself. Yesterday’s rain had been awful – the kind of joyous rain where every cloud had decided to join the party once one cloud had cracked open the first deluge.

She had felt proud of having the two steadings at first, flying between Lancre and the Chalk every few days, but broomsticks are not very fast. Or warm.
^fn2
It was good that she could go back home to where her mother did the cooking,
but even back home there was no time to rest, and being away in Lancre for half the week meant she was facing a plethora of demands from the Chalk. People weren’t getting nasty about it – after all, she was a witch, and Lancre had more people than the Chalk – but there were these little strains beginning to develop. A few mutters. And she had a horrible feeling that some of the muttering was
coming from other witches – witches who were finding queues at their doors, people who had gone to find Granny Weatherwax and just found an empty cottage.

Some of the problem in both steadings was with the old men left behind when their wives had died; a lot of them didn’t know how to cook. Occasionally some of the old ladies would help and you would see them carrying a pot of stew round for
the old man next door. But the witch part of Tiffany couldn’t help but notice that this happened more often if the old lady was a widow and the old man had a nice cottage and a bit of money put by . . .

There was always
something
that had to be done – and some days it seemed mostly to be about toenails. There was one old man in Lancre – a decent old boy – whose toenails were as sharp as a lethal
weapon, and Tiffany had to ask Jason Ogg, a blacksmith, to make her a pair of secateurs tough enough to break through them. She always closed her eyes until she heard the patter of his toenails banging off the ceiling, but the old man called her his lovely lady and tried to give her money. And at least she now knew that the Feegles had a use for the toenail clippings.

Witches liked useful things,
Tiffany mused, as she tried to take her mind off the chill wind whipping around her. A witch would never have to ask for anything – oh no, no one wanted to
owe
a witch anything – and a witch didn’t take money either. Instead she accepted things she could make use of: food, and old clothing, and bits of cloth for bandages, and spare boots.

Boots. She had tripped over Granny Weatherwax’s boots
again that very day. She had put them in the corner of the room now, and there they sat, almost staring at her when she was too weary to think.
You’re not good enough yet to fill these boots
, they seemed to say. Y
ou’ll have to do a lot more first.

Of course, there always
was
such a lot to do. So many people never seemed to think about the consequences of their everyday actions. And then a witch
on her broom would have to set out from her bed in the rain at the dead of night because of ‘I only’ and its little friends ‘I didn’t know’ and ‘It’s not my fault’.

I only wanted to see if the copper was hot . . .

I didn’t know a boiling pot was dangerous . . .

It’s not my fault – no one told me dogs that bark might also bite.

And, her favourite,
I didn’t know it would go off bang
– when it
said ‘goes bang’ on the box it came in.
That
had been when little Ted Cooper had put an explosive banger
^fn3
into the carcass of a chicken after his mum’s birthday party and nearly killed everybody around the table. Yes, she had bandaged and treated everybody, even the joker, but she hoped very much his dad had kicked his arse afterwards.

And when the witch wasn’t there, well, what harm was there
in trying out a few things for yourself? Most people knew about using plants to cure things. They were certain about that. But the thing about plants is that many of them look like all the others, and so Mistress Holland, wife of the miller of the Chalk, had treated her husband’s unfortunate skin condition with Love Lies Oozing rather than with Merryday Root and now his skin had turned purple.

Tiffany had treated the man, but then it had been time for her to go back to Lancre, and she was up, up and away again on her stick, hoping that they had both learned their lesson.

She was very thankful that Nanny Ogg was not too far away from Granny’s . . . no,
her
cottage. There were a lot of things that Tiffany was good at, but cookery wasn’t one of them, and so just as she relied on her mum
and dad for meals in the Chalk, in Lancre she relied on Nanny. Strictly speaking, this meant she was relying on Nanny’s army of daughters-in-law, who couldn’t do enough for their old Nanny.
^fn4

But wherever the pair of them took their meals – either in Tiffany’s little cottage in the woods, or at Tir Nani Ogg, the overcrowded but very comfortable home where Nanny Ogg ruled the roost – it seemed
that You was there too. No cat could move as fast as her, but you never
saw
her move fast, she just
arrived
. It was baffling. What was also baffling was how Greebo – Nanny’s ancient tomcat who treated a bit of eyeball scratching as a friendly hello – slunk away when You appeared.

The white cat had clearly made her decision and was a constant presence in Tiffany’s life in Lancre. Now, when Tiffany
got ready for an afternoon of going round the houses, You would jump on the broomstick before Tiffany had even looked at it, which made Nanny laugh, saying, ‘She’s got you down pat, my girl. Maybe she could go round the houses by herself!’

Nanny Ogg was actually rather impressed by Tiffany. But also worried. ‘Really,’ she said to her one day as they shared a quick meal, ‘
you
know you’re good,
Tiff. I know you’re good.
Granny
, wherever she is now, knew you was good, but you don’t have to keep tryin’ to do it all on your own, my girl. Let some of them young girls around here – the apprentices – take some of the strain.’ She paused as she chewed on a big mouthful of stew, then added, ‘That young lumberjack up in the mountains what Esme sewed up just the day afore she died? Well, young
Harrieta Bilk’s been goin’ on up there to see to him,
an
’ doin’ a good job too. Tiff, you have to do it your own way, I know, but you ain’t the only witch in Lancre. Sometimes you needs to put your feet up and let the parade go by.’

Tiffany had barely had time to listen before she was back on her stick and heading down to the Chalk again. No rest for the busy witch with two steadings! But as
the ear-numbing wind whistled by, she considered what Nanny had said. It was true that there were other witches in Lancre, but in the Chalk – unless Letitia decided to stop being just a baroness – Tiffany was the only witch. And if her forebodings were right, if Jeannie’s words came true, then one witch for the Chalk might not be anywhere near enough.

She shivered. She was looking forward to
getting out of the icy wind and into the warmth of her mother’s kitchen. But there was one person she needed to see first . . .

It took Tiffany a long time to find Miss Tick, but eventually she landed in a little wood just outside Ham-on-Rye where the travelling witch, the witchfinder, had stopped her caravan for tea. A small mule was tethered nearby enjoying the contents of its feed bag. It
looked at Tiffany as she approached and neighed.

‘He’s called Joseph,’ said Miss Tick. ‘A real witch’s mule.’

It had started to rain again and Miss Tick quickly waved Tiffany up the wooden caravan steps. Tiffany was glad to see that there was a kettle bubbling on a little stove. She perched herself on the edge of a bench seat fitted just inside the door, facing the stove, and gratefully took
the offered cup of tea.

Inside the caravan, it was just as Tiffany expected. Miss Tick had everything ship-shape without needing a ship. On the walls were lots of little racks, neatly filled with many things, and all annotated in Miss Tick’s careful teacher-y hand. Tiffany looked closer and,
yes
, they were in alphabetical order. Elsewhere were little pots without labels, so you would never know
what was inside them, and by the side of her bed there was a chart showing a variety of knots – escapology was a useful hobby for a witch.

‘I’ll be grateful if you don’t touch my little jars,’ said Miss Tick. ‘Some of those concoctions might not work properly and the results are often unpredictable. But, you know, one should keep on experimenting.’

That’s what’s in all the pots, thought Tiffany,
taking a sip of her tea. Experiments.

‘Glad to see you,’ Miss Tick continued. ‘I am hearing about you all the time. You know, almost every girl I meet wants to be you. They see you whizzing about all over the place on your broomstick and they all want to be
you
, Mistress Aching. Suddenly it’s become a career choice to be a witch!’

‘Oh yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘That’s how it starts out, and then you
tell them exactly what they would spend their life doing, and quite a few of them decide to go to the big city and be a hairdresser or something.’

‘Well, I make no bones about it,’ said Miss Tick firmly. ‘I tell them to think hard; it’s not all magic and waving wands and all that silly business. It’s dirt and grime.’

Tiffany sighed. ‘Being a witch is a man’s job: that’s why it needs women to
do it.’

Miss Tick laughed and continued, ‘Well, I remember a little girl who was unsure of herself and I told her that I would give her lessons that she would never forget in a hurry.’

Tiffany smiled. ‘I remember. And now I am in a hurry everywhere these days. But Miss Tick’ – she paused and her voice went a bit quiet – ‘I have a feeling that some of the older witches are beginning to think
I might not be able to cope . . .’ She swallowed. ‘Up in Lancre, mostly. But it means I do have to be there a lot.’ She bit her lip – she
hated
asking for help. Was she saying that she wasn’t really up to the job?
Letting Granny Weatherwax down
, since Granny had been the one to put her name up for it. She couldn’t remember Granny ever asking for help. ‘Down here, on the Chalk,’ she said, ‘I think
I maybe need to . . . er . . . train an apprentice. Have some help.’

The heavens didn’t open. There was no gasp of horror from the other witch at this request. Miss Tick simply crossed her arms sternly. ‘It’s Letice Earwig, I suppose, who’s put those doubts into people’s heads. She thinks things always have to be done the same way, so that means she would take over, I suppose? She’s a senior
witch who believes she knows every blessed thing, but it’s all just tinkly-winkly stuff. The stupid woman who wrote
My Fairy Friends
should be ashamed to call herself a witch, and certainly shouldn’t hope to walk in the footsteps of Granny Weatherwax. Hah, Letice Earwig certainly couldn’t manage two steadings at once. She can’t really even cope with
one
.’ She snorted derisively. ‘Do not forget,
Tiffany, that I am a
teacher
.
^fn5
And we teachers can be really nasty when it comes to it.
Ten Steps to Witchcraft
and
The Romance of the Broomstick
are not what
I
would call proper books. Oh, I’ll certainly look out for a girl or two for you – it’s a very good idea. But you don’t need to worry about what Mrs Earwig might say, oh no . . .’

^fn1
There was the usual man-who-puts-weasels-down-his-trousers in action too. Hence the need for a doctor.

^fn2
It gets awfully cold up there, and no sensible witch ever took to the skies without several layers of flannelette between her and the stick.

^fn3
Another tiny clue.

^fn4
‘Enough’ wasn’t really a long enough word to describe the numerous little tasks any young woman marrying into the Ogg family found were expected of her.

^fn5
Said in a way that made anyone listening know this instantly.

CHAPTER 7

A Force of Nature

LETICE EARWIG WAS
not someone who would take being balked lying down. Or standing up, come to that. In truth, she was a force of nature and she hated to back down on anything.

It hadn’t taken her long to hear that there had been a queue one day outside Nanny Ogg’s home. Tiffany Aching, Mrs Earwig decided, was Not Coping. And it needed a witch of senior stature to
Do Something about it. In Letice Earwig’s opinion – never a small thing – she was in fact the
only
witch who had the stature to act, especially as that old baggage Nanny Ogg wouldn’t do a thing.