Preston shifted from one foot to the other. ‘He is in the crypt, madam, paying his respects to his father.’
‘You will not call me madam! “Madam” is a title for the wives of grocers! Nor can you call me “my lady”, which is a title for the wives of knights and other riffraff! I am a duchess and am therefore to be addressed as “your grace”. Do you understand?’
‘Yes … m … your grace!’ Preston threw in another salute in self-defence.
For a moment, at least, the Duchess seemed satisfied, but it was definitely among the shorter kinds of moments.
‘Very well. And now you will take this creature’ – she waved a hand towards Tiffany – ‘and lock her in your dungeon. Do you understand me?’
Shocked, Preston looked to Tiffany for guidance. She gave him a wink, just to keep his spirits up. He turned back to the Duchess.
‘Lock her in the dungeon?’
The Duchess glared at him. ‘That is what I said!’
Preston frowned. ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘It means taking the goats out.’
‘Young man, it is not my concern what you do with the goats! I order you to incarcerate this witch immediately! Now, get on with it, or I will see to it that you lose your position.’
Tiffany was already impressed with Preston, but now he won a medal. ‘Can’t do that,’ he said, ‘ ‘cause of happy ass. The sergeant told me all about it. Happy ass. Happy ass corp ass. Means you can’t just lock somebody away if they haven’t broken the law. Happy ass corp ass. It’s all written down. Happy ass corp ass,’ he repeated helpfully.
This defiance seemed to push the Duchess beyond rage and into some sort of fascinated horror. This spotty-faced youth in ill-fitting armour was defying her over some stupid words. Such a thing had never happened to her before. It was like finding out that frogs talked. That would be very fascinating and everything, but sooner or later a talking frog has to be squashed.
‘You will hand in your armour and leave this castle forthwith, do you understand? You are sacked. You have lost your position and I will make it my business to see that you never get a job as a guard ever again, young man.’
Preston shook his head. ‘Can’t happen like that, your lady grace.
’Cause of happy ass corp ass. The sergeant said to me, “Preston, you stick to happy ass corp ass. It is your friend. You can stand on happy ass corp ass.”’
The Duchess glared at Tiffany, and since Tiffany’s silence appeared to annoy her even more than anything she would have to say, she smiled and said nothing, in the hope that the Duchess might possibly explode. Instead, and as expected, she turned on Preston.
‘How dare you talk back to me like that, you scoundrel!’ She raised the shiny stick with the knob on it. But suddenly, it seemed immovable.
‘You will not hit him, madam,’ said Tiffany in a calm voice. ‘I will see your arm breaks before you strike him. We do not strike people in this castle.’
The Duchess snarled and tugged at the stick, but neither stick nor arm seemed to want to move.
‘In a moment, the stick will come free,’ said Tiffany. ‘If you attempt to strike anyone with it again, I will break it in half. Please understand that this is not a warning – it is a forecast.’
The Duchess glared at her, but must have seen something in Tiffany’s face that her own resolute stupidity could worry about. She let go of the stick and it fell to the floor. ‘You have not heard the last of this, witch girl!’
‘Just witch, madam. Just witch,’ said Tiffany as the woman strutted at speed out of the hall.
‘Are we going to get into trouble?’ said Preston quietly.
Tiffany gave a little shrug. ‘I will see to it that you don’t,’ she said. And she thought, And so will the sergeant. I’ll make sure of it. She looked around the hall and saw the faces of the watching servants hurriedly turn away, as if they were afraid. There wasn’t any real magic, she thought. I just stood my ground. You have to stand your ground, because it’s your ground.
‘I was wondering,’ said Preston, ‘if you were going to turn her into a cockroach and stamp on her. I’ve heard that witches can do that,’ he added hopefully.
‘Well, I won’t say that it is impossible,’ said Tiffany, ‘but you won’t see a witch doing it. Besides, there are practical problems.’
Preston nodded sagely. ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘The different body mass for one thing, which would mean you would end up with either one enormous human-sized cockroach, which I think would probably collapse under its own weight, or dozens or even hundreds of people-shaped cockroaches. But the snag there, I think, might be that their brain might work very badly – though, of course, if you had the right spells, I suppose you could magic all the bits of the human that wouldn’t fit into the cockroach into some kind of big bucket so they could use it to get themselves bigger again when they were tired of being small. But the problem there would be what happened if some hungry dog came along when the lid was off. That would be quite bad. Sorry, have I said something wrong?’
‘Er, no,’ said Tiffany. ‘Er, don’t you think that you’re a bit too smart to be a guard, Preston?’
Preston shrugged. ‘Well, the lads all think that I am useless,’ he said cheerfully. ‘They think that there’s got to be something wrong with someone who can pronounce the word “marvellous”.’
‘But, Preston … I know you are very clever and sufficiently erudite to know the meaning of the word “erudite”. Why do you sometimes pretend to be stupid – you know, like “doctrine” and “happy ass corp ass”?’