The Shepherd's Crown (10 page)

She’d finished in the kitchen and the scullery, leaving everything so bright that her eyes watered, and then there was nothing for it but to go upstairs. On her hands and knees, with bucket and brush and rags and grease – that is, elbow grease – Tiffany
cleaned and cleaned until her knuckles were red and she was satisfied.

But that wasn’t the end of it: there was Granny’s small wardrobe, with its few well-worn and serviceable dresses hanging in there, along with a cloak. All black, of course. Tucked away on a shelf was the Zephyr Billow Cloak Tiffany herself had given Granny – unworn, as far as she could see, but kept carefully, like a special
possession. She felt her eyes begin to prickle . . .

Beside the bed were Granny Weatherwax’s boots. Good, serviceable boots, Tiffany thought. And Granny had hated waste. But . . . to actually wear them? She was going to find it hard enough to follow in Granny’s footsteps. She swallowed. She was sure she could find a good home for the boots. In the meantime, well, she poked forward a toe and pushed
them out of sight, beneath the bed.

Then of course there was the kitchen garden and, above all, the herbs. Tiffany found a pair of heavy gloves in the scullery – you didn’t go into Granny’s herbs without heavy gloves until they knew you. Granny had foraged, bartered and been given herbs from just about everywhere, and she had Rotating Spinach, and Doubting Plums, Ginny Come Nether, Twirlabout,
Tickle My Fancy Root, Jump in the Basin and Jack-go-to-bed-and-never-get-up, Daisy-upsy-Daisy and Old Man Root. There was a clump of Love Lies Oozing by the Jack by Moonlight and a very active Maiden’s Respite. Tiffany did not know what all of them were for; she would have to ask Nanny Ogg. Or Magrat Garlick, who – like her husband Verence, the King of Lancre – was very enthusiastic about herbs.
^fn1
Though
un
like her husband, Magrat did actually know her Troubling Tony from her Multitude Root.

It was never easy being a witch. Oh, the broomstick was great, but to be a witch you needed to be sensible, so sensible that sometimes it hurt. You dealt with the reality – not what people wanted. The reality right now was suddenly You, meowing and banging her head against Tiffany’s legs, demanding
food, which she then ignored completely when Tiffany went back into the kitchen and placed a dish of it down for her on the floor.

Tiffany went outdoors again and fed the chickens, let the goats out to graze, had a word with the bees and then thought, I’ve done my bit. The place is spotless, the bees are happy, even the lean-to is clean. If Nanny can come in and feed the animals, keep an eye
on You, then I can go back home for a few days . . .

Reaching the Chalk after a flight that was long and, sadly, very wet, since the rain was teeming down,
^fn2
she flew to the house of young Milly Robinson, the Feegles clinging on behind, under and actually
on
her in their usual style.

Milly’s two baby boys looked well fed, but the little girl – baby Tiffany – didn’t. Unfortunately Witch Tiffany
was used to this sort of thing, especially when the mothers weren’t very clever or had bossy mothers and thought feeding the boys was the main thing in life. It was why, just after the baby’s birth, she had whispered that spell into the baby’s ear. A simple tracking magic, so she would know if any harm befell the little girl. Just a precaution, she had told herself at the time.

There was no use
getting nasty about all this, so she took the young woman aside and said, ‘Milly, listen. Yes, your boys have to be straight and strong when they grow up, but my mother always used to say to me:
Your son’s your son until he takes a wife, but your daughter is your daughter all of your life
. And I think that’s right enough. You help your mother out still, don’t you? And she helps you. So fair shares
for the little girl is the right thing to do. Please.’ Then, because the carrot – or in this case, the breast milk – sometimes needed to be accompanied by the stick, she added sternly, the pointy hat making her seem older and wiser than she would otherwise appear, ‘I shall be watching after her interests.’ A little bit of menace often did the trick, she had learned. And, of course, she
would
watch.

Then there was only one person she wanted to talk to; and the rain was getting harder still as her stick drifted down towards the Feegle mound on the hill, Rob and the other Feegles toppling off as she approached. Daft Wullie made a spectacularly bad landing, head first into the gorse, and a rabble of young Feegles rushed up joyously to unscrew him.

There were a couple of Rob’s older sons lounging
around outside the entrance. They were scrawny, even by Feegle standards, with barely a wisp of beard hair between them and impractically low-slung spogs knocking about their knees, their kilts hung low on their skinny hips. To Tiffany’s amazement, she could see the top bands of
coloured pants
riding high above them.
Pants?
On a Feegle? The times were indeed changing.

‘Pull yon kilts up, lads!’
Rob muttered as they pushed their way past.

The kelda was in her chamber, surrounded by Feegle babies, all rolling around on a floor covered with the fleeces of sheep gone to another land. And the first words she said were, ‘I know . . .’ She sighed and added, ‘It’s grieving I am, but the wheel takes all in time.’ Her face crinkled into a huge smile. ‘It’s happy I am to see you as leader of the
witches, Tiffan.’

‘Well, thank you,’ said Tiffany. How did Jeannie know? she wondered for a moment. But every kelda used the way of the hiddlins to see things past, present and future . . . and it was a secret known only to the keldas, passed down one to the other.

She understood too that although Jeannie was very small, she was someone to whom she could tell every secret, in the assurance that
it would never be passed on to anyone. And now she hesitantly said, ‘Jeannie, I don’t think I could ever fill her boots.’

‘Really?’ said the kelda sharply. ‘Dinna you think Esmerelda Weatherwax may nae have kenned the same thing when the position was gi’n to her? Do ye suppose yon hag then said, Nae me. I’m nae guid enough?’ The wise little pictsie was looking at Tiffany as if she was some kind
of specimen, a new plant perhaps, and then she lowered her voice and said, ‘I ken well enough that ye will be a guid leader.’

‘Though only the first amongst equals rather than a leader,’ Tiffany added. ‘At least, I’m sure that’s what the other witches think . . .’ Her voice trailed off, her doubts hanging in the air.

‘Is that so?’ said the kelda. She went quiet for a moment, then said softly,
‘Ye who kissed the spirit of winter and sent him packing, aye. Yet I ken that ye have in front of ye something less easy, Tiffan. There is a change coming in the heavens, and ye will need to be there.’ Her voice grew even more sombre and her small eyes were fixed on Tiffany now. ‘Be aware, Tir-far-thóinn; this is a time of transition,’ she said. ‘Mistress Weatherwax is nae longer wi’ us, and her
goin’ leaves a . . . hole that others willnae fail to see. We mus’ watch the gateways, and ye mus’ tak’ great care. For them ye don’t wish to know might be seeking ye out.’

It was good to be home, Tiffany thought, when at last she arrived there. Back at her parents’ farm – it was even
called
Home Farm – back where her mother cooked a hot dinner every night. Back where she could sit at the big
wooden kitchen table, which was scarred by generations of Achings, and become a little girl again.

But she wasn’t a little girl any more. She was a witch. One with two steadings to look after. And over the next week as she flew back and forth from the Chalk to Lancre, from Lancre to the Chalk, in weather that seemed to be enjoying a competition to be the wettest ever for the time of year, it
seemed to her that she was always arriving late, wet and tired. People were nearly always polite – to her face, anyway, and certainly to the pointy hat – but she could tell from what they didn’t say that somehow, indefinably, whatever she did, it wasn’t quite enough. She got up earlier every day and went to bed later, but it still wasn’t enough.

She needed to be a good witch. A strong witch.
And in between the carrying and the healing, the helping and the listening, she could feel sudden prickles of alarm run up and down her body. Jeannie had warned her that something dreadful might be coming . . . Would she be up to the job? She didn’t even think she was doing very well with all the usual stuff.

She couldn’t be Granny Weatherwax for them in Lancre.

And it was getting harder and
harder to be Tiffany Aching for the Chalk.

Even at home. Even there. She struggled in wearily one night, longing for food, peace and her bed, and as her mother pulled a huge pot from the big black oven and placed it in the centre of the table, a family row was just starting.

‘I met Sid Pigeon outside the Baron’s Arms today,’ her brother Wentworth, a strapping lad not
quite
old enough for the
pub yet, but certainly old enough to hang around outside, was saying.

‘Sid Pigeon?’ Mrs Aching wondered.

‘The younger of the two Pigeon brothers,’ her father said.

Younger
, thought Tiffany. That counted for a lot in farming country. It meant the older brother got the farm. Though if she remembered correctly, the Pigeon farm was a pretty poor place, not very well run. Wasn’t Mr Pigeon a regular
at the Baron’s Arms? She tried to remember Mrs Pigeon, and failed. But yes, she remembered Sid. She’d seen him only a few weeks back, up near Twoshirts – a small boy who had seemingly grown into his name when someone had given him a peaked cap and a whistle to hang around his neck.

‘He was telling me about them railway jobs,’ Wentworth went on enthusiastically. ‘He’s earning good money, is Sid.
Says they need more men. It’s the future, Dad. Railways, not sheep!’

‘Don’t get any daft ideas, lad,’ his father warned. ‘Railways is for them as don’t take on land to farm. Not like us Achings. Not like
you
. You know what your future holds for you. It’s right here, where it’s always been for an Aching lad.’

‘But—’ Wentworth wasn’t happy. Tiffany shot him a look. She knew how he felt. And after
all, she herself wasn’t doing what had been expected of her, was she? If she had, she’d be getting married about now, like her sisters had, getting ready to produce a few more grandchildren for her mother to fuss over.

Her mother seemed to be thinking of the same thing. ‘You always seem to be somewhere else these days,’ she said, changing the subject from Wentworth to Tiffany, trying hard not
to sound like she was complaining. ‘I wish you could be with us more, Tiff,’ she added a bit sadly.

‘Don’t bother the lass. She’s some kind of top witch now, you know. She can’t be everywhere,’ her father said.

Feeling like a little girl, Tiffany said, ‘I try to be around here as much as possible but we don’t really have enough witches to do the work that’s needed.’

Her mother smiled nervously
and said, ‘I know you work hard, dear. There’s lots of people who stop me in the road to say that my girl has helped their kid or their father. Everybody sees that you are running about like nobody’s business. And you know what people are saying? They are saying to me, you are growing up like your granny. After all, she used to tell the Baron what to do. And you do the same.’

‘Well, Granny Aching
wasn’t a witch,’ said Tiffany.

‘That depends,’ said her father, turning away from Wentworth, who stomped out and slammed the kitchen door behind him. Joe Aching looked after him for a moment, then sighed and winked at Tiffany. ‘There are surely different kinds of witches. You remember how your granny wanted the shepherd’s hut burned down once she was dead? “Burn everything,” she told me.’ He
smiled and said, ‘I almost did what I was told. But there was a thing she had and it was not for the burning, so I wrapped it up, and now, seeing you, my girl, here’s a little memento from Granny Aching.’

To Tiffany’s surprise her father was crying, under his smiles, as he gave her a little package wrapped up in crinkled paper and tied with a piece of old wool. She opened it and turned the little
ridged object over in her hand.

‘It’s a shepherd’s crown,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen them before – they are quite easy to find.’

Joe Aching laughed and said, ‘Not this one. Your granny said it was special – the crown of crowns. And if the Shepherd of Shepherds picked it up, it would turn into gold. Look, beneath the grey you can see the hints of gold.’

Tiffany looked at the little object while she
ate her stew, made as only her mother could make it, and she thought about the days when Granny Aching would come down to the farm for a meal.

It seemed to some that the old woman had lived on Jolly Sailor tobacco; and there was no doubt about it – when it came to sheep, Granny Aching knew everything. But the mind starts running all by itself and Tiffany thought about all the things Granny had
done and the things that Granny had said. Then the memories came as a cavalcade, whether she wanted them or not, settling on her like snow.

Tiffany thought of the times she had walked with her granny. Mostly in silence, sometimes with Thunder and Lightning – Granny Aching’s sheepdogs – at their heels. She had learned a lot from the old woman.

She taught me so much, she said to herself. She
built
me as we were walking around after the sheep, and she told me all those things that I needed to know, and the first thing was to look after people. Of course, the other thing had been to look after the sheep.

And all she had ever asked for was her shepherd’s hut and some horrible tobacco.

Tiffany dropped her spoon. It was all right to sob in this familiar kitchen like she had when she was
a girl.

Immediately, her father was there beside her. ‘You can do a lot, jigget, but no one could do it all.’

‘Yes,’ said her mother. ‘And we keep your bed ready every day. And we know you are doing a lot of good and I am proud when I see you flying around. But you can’t do everything for everybody. Don’t go out again tonight. Please.’