‘If you …’ the girl managed. ‘If you … if you grasp the nettle lightly, it will sting you for your pain, but if you grasp the nettle boldly, soft as silk it will remain. So it is with human nature, treat them kindly, they rebel, but if you firmly grasp the nettle, then your bidding they do well.’
Tiffany realized, as the damp little voice faded away, that there was otherwise absolute silence in the hall and everybody was staring. She rather hoped that somebody might forget themselves sufficiently to start clapping, although that would probably mean the end of the world. Instead, the bride took one look at the open mouths and fled, sobbing, as fast as her very expensive but seriously impractical shoes would carry her; Tiffany heard them clicking madly all the way up the stairs, followed very shortly afterwards by the slamming of a door.
Tiffany walked away slowly, just a shadow in the air to anyone who wasn’t paying attention. She shook her head. Why had he done it? Why in the world had Roland done it? Roland could have married anyone! Not Tiffany herself, of course, but why had he chosen that, well – not to be unpleasant – skinny girl?
And her father had been a duke, her mother was a duchess and she was a duckling – well, one might try to be charitable, but she did tend to walk like one. Well, she did. If you looked carefully you could see her feet stuck out.
And if you cared about these things, the dreadful mother and the soppy daughter outranked Roland! They could officially bully him!
The old Baron, now, had been a different sort of person. Oh yes, he liked it if the children gave a little bow or curtsied if he passed them in the lane, but he knew everybody’s name, and generally their birthdays as well, and he was always polite. Tiffany remembered him stopping her one day and saying, ‘Would you be so kind as to ask your father to come and see me, please?’ It was such a gentle phrase for a man with such power.
Her mother and father used to argue about him, when they thought she was safely tucked up in bed. In between the symphony of the bedsprings she often heard them almost, but not exactly, having a row. Her father would say things like: ‘It’s all very well you saying he is generous and all that, but don’t you tell me that his ancestors didn’t get their money by grinding the faces of the poor!’ And her mother would retort: ‘I have never seen him grind anything! Anyway, that was the olden days. You’ve got to have someone to protect us. That stands to reason!’ And her father would come back with something along the lines of: ‘Protect us from who? Another man with a sword? I reckon we could do that by ourselves!’ And around this time the conversation would peter out, since her parents were still in love, in a comfortable type of way, and neither of them really wanted anything to change at all.
It seemed to her, looking down the length of the hall, that you didn’t need to grind the faces of the poor if you taught them to do their own grinding.
The shock of the thought made her giddy, but it stayed in her mind. The guards were all local boys, or married to local girls, and what would happen if everybody in the village got together and said to the new Baron: ‘Look, we will let you stay here, and you can even sleep in the big bedroom, and of course we’ll give you all your meals and flick a duster around from time to time, but apart from that this land is ours now, do you understand?’ Would it work?
Probably not. But she remembered asking her father to get the old stone barn cleaned up. That would be a start. She had plans for the old barn.
‘You there! Yes! You there in the shadows! Are you lollygagging?’
This time she paid attention. All that thinking had meant that she hadn’t paid enough attention to her little don’t-see-me trick. She stepped out of the shadows, which meant that the pointy black hat was not just a shadow. The Duchess glared at it.
It was time for Tiffany to break the ice, even though it was so thick as to require an axe. She said politely, ‘I don’t know how to lollygag, madam, but I will do my best.’
‘What? What! What did you call me?’
The people in the hall were learning fast and they were scuttling as quickly as they could to get out of the place, because the Duchess’s tone of voice was a storm warning, and nobody likes to be out in a storm.
The sudden rage overtook Tiffany. It wasn’t as if she had done anything to deserve being shouted at like that. She said, ‘I’m sorry, madam; I did not call you anything, to the best of my belief.’
This did not do anything to help; the Duchess’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, I know you. The witch – the witch girl who followed us to the city on who knows what dark errand? Oh, we know about witches where I’m from! Meddlers, sowers of doubt, breeders of discontent, lacking all morality, and charlatans into the bargain!’
The Duchess pulled herself right up and glowered at Tiffany as if she had just won a decisive victory. She tapped her cane on the ground.
Tiffany said nothing, but nothing was hard to say. She could sense the watching servants behind curtains and pillars, or peering around doors. The woman was smirking, and really needed that smirk removed, because Tiffany owed it to all witches to show the world that a witch could not be treated like this. On the other hand, if Tiffany spoke her mind it would certainly be taken out on the servants. This needed some delicate wording. It did not get it, because the old bat gave a nasty little snigger and said, ‘Well, child? Aren’t you going to try to turn me into some kind of unspeakable creature?’
Tiffany tried. She really tried. But there are times when things are just too mu
ch. She took a deep breath.
‘I don’t think I shall bother, madam, seeing as you are making such a good job of it yourself!’
The sudden silence was nevertheless peppered with little sounds like a guard behind a pillar sticking his hand over his mouth so that his shocked laughter would not be heard, and a splutter as – on the other side of a curtain – a maid almost achieved the same thing. But it was the tiny little click of a door high above that stayed in Tiffany’s memory. Was that Letitia? Had she overheard? Well, it didn’t matter, because the Duchess was gloating now, with Tiffany safely in the palm of her hand.
She shouldn’t have risen to the stupid insults, whoever was listening. And now the woman was going to take terrible delight in making trouble for Tiffany, anyone near to her and quite probably everyone she’d ever known.
Tiffany felt chilly sweat running down her back. It had never been like this before – not even with the wintersmith; not even Annagramma being unpleasant on a bad day; not even the Fairy Queen, who was good at spite. The Duchess beat them all: she was a bully, the kind of bully who forces her victim into retaliation, which therefore becomes the justification for further and nastier bullying, with collateral damage to any innocent bystanders who would be invited by the bully to put the blame for their discomfiture onto the victim.
The Duchess looked around the shadowy hall. ‘Is there a guard here?’ She waited in delighted malice. ‘I know there is a guard here somewhere!’
There was the sound of hesitant footsteps and Preston, the trainee guard, appeared from out of the shadows and walked a nervous walk towards Tiffany and the Duchess. Of course, it would have to be Preston, Tiffany thought; the other guards would be too experienced to risk a generous helping of the Duchess’s wrath. And he was smiling nervously too, not a good thing to do when dealing with people like the Duchess. At least he had the sense to salute when he reached her, and by the standards of people who had never been told how to salute properly, and in any case had to do so very rarely, it was a good salute.
The Duchess winced. ‘Why are you grinning, young man?’
Preston gave the question some serious thought, and said, ‘The sun is shining, madam, and I am happy being a guard.’
‘You will not grin at me, young man. Smiling leads to familiarity, which I will not tolerate at any price. Where is the Baron?’