The Wee Free Men (8 page)

“Why did you steal the sheep?”

There was a lot of muttering and nudging, and then one of the tiny men removed his rabbit-skull helmet and twiddled it nervously in his hands.

“We wuz hungerin’, mistress,” he muttered. “But when we kenned it was thine, we did put the beastie back in the fold.”

They looked so crestfallen that Tiffany took pity on them.

“I expect you wouldn’t have stolen it if you weren’t so hungry, then,” she said.

There were several hundred astonished looks.

“Oh, we would, mistress,” said the helmet twiddler.

“You would?”

Tiffany sounded so surprised that the twiddler looked around at his colleagues for support. They all nodded.

“Yes, mistress. We have tae. We are a famously stealin’ folk. Aren’t we, lads? Whut’s it we’re famous for?”

“Stealin’!” shouted the blue men.

“And what else, lads?”

“Fightin’!”

“And what else?”

“Drinkin’!”

“And what else?”

There was a certain amount of thought about this, but they all reached the same conclusion.

“Drinkin’
and
fightin’!”

“And there was summat else,” muttered the twiddler. “Ach, yes. Tell the hag, lads!”

“Stealin’ an’ drinkin’ an’ fightin’!” shouted the blue men cheerfully.

“Tell the wee hag who we are, lads,” said the helmet twiddler.

There was the scrape of many small swords being drawn and thrust into the air.

“Nac Mac Feegle! The Wee Free Men! Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master!
We willna be fooled again!
”

Tiffany stared at them. They were all watching her to see what she was going to do next, and the longer she said nothing, the
more worried they become. They lowered their swords, looking embarrassed.

“But we wouldna dare deny a powerful hag, except mebbe for strong drink,” said the twiddler, his helmet spinning desperately in his hands and his eyes on the bottle of Special Sheep Liniment. “Will ye no’ help us?”

“Help you?” said Tiffany. “I want you to help me! Someone has taken my brother in broad daylight.”

“Oh waily, waily waily!” said the helmet twiddler. “She’s come, then. She’s come a-fetchin’. We’re too late! It’s the Quin!”

“What, there were four of them?” said Tiffany.

“They mean the Queen,” said the toad. “The Queen of the—”

“Hush yer gob!” shouted the helmet twiddler, but his voice was lost in the wails and groans of the Nac Mac Feegle. They were pulling at their hair and stamping on the ground and shouting, “Alackaday!” and “Waily waily waily!” and the toad was arguing with the helmet twiddler and everyone was getting louder to make themselves heard—

Tiffany stood up. “Everybody shut up right now!” she said.

Silence fell, except for a few sniffs and faint wailys from the back.

“We wuz only dreeing our weird, mistress,” said the helmet twiddler, almost crouching in fear.

“But not in here!” snapped Tiffany, shaking with anger. “This is a
dairy
! I have to keep it clean!”

“Er…
dreeing your weird
means ‘facing your fate,’” said the toad.

“’Cause if the Quin is here, then it means our kelda is weakenin’ fast,” said the helmet twiddler. “An’ we’ll ha’ naeone tae look after us.”

No one to look after us, thought Tiffany. Hundreds of tough
little men who could each win the Worst Broken Nose Contest need someone to look after them?

She took a deep breath.

“My mother’s in the house crying,” she said, “and…” I don’t know how to comfort her, she added to herself. I’m no
good
at this sort of thing, I never know what I should be saying. Out loud she said: “And she wants him back. Er. A lot.” She added, hating to say it, “He’s her favorite.”

She pointed to the helmet twiddler, who backed away.

“First of all,” she said, “I can’t keep thinking of you as the helmet twiddler, so what is your name?”

A gasp went up from the Nac Mac Feegle, and Tiffany heard one of them murmur, “Aye, she’s the hag, sure enough. That’s a hag’s question!”

The helmet twiddler looked around at them as if seeking help.

“We dinna give oour names,” he muttered. But another Feegle, somewhere safe at the back said, “Wheest! You canna refuse a hag!”

The little man looked up, very worried.

“I’m the Big Man o’ the clan, mistress,” he said. “An’ my name it is…” He swallowed. “Rob Anybody Feegle, mistress. But I beg ye not to use it agin me!”

The toad was ready for this.

“They think names have magic in them,” he murmured. “They don’t tell them to people in case they are written down.”

“Aye, an’ put upon comp-li-cated documents,” said a Feegle.

“An’ summonses and such things,” said another.

“Or ‘Wanted’ posters!” said another.

“Aye, an’ bills an’ affidavits,” said another.

“Writs of distrainment, even!” The Feegles looked around in panic at the very thought of written-down things.

“They think written words are even more powerful,” whispered the toad. “They think all writing is magic. Words worry them. See their swords? They glow blue in the presence of lawyers.”

“All
right
,” said Tiffany. “We’re getting somewhere. I promise not to write his name down. Now tell me about this Queen who’s taken Wentworth. Queen of what?”

“Canna say it aloud, mistress,” said Rob Anybody. “She hears her name wherever it’s said, and she comes callin’.”

“Actually, that’s true,” said the toad. “You do not want to meet her, ever.”

“She’s bad?”

“Worse. Just call her the Queen.”

“Aye, the Quin,” said Rob Anybody. He looked at Tiffany with bright, worried eyes. “Ye dinna ken o’ the Quin? An’ you the wean o’ Granny Aching, who had these hills in her bones? Ye dinna ken the ways? She did not show ye the ways? Ye’re no’ a hag? How can this be? Ye slammered Jenny Green-Teeth and stared the Heidless Horseman in the eyes he hasna got, and you dinna ken?”

Tiffany gave him a brittle smile and then whispered to the toad, “Who’s Ken? And what about his dinner? And what’s a wean of Granny Aching?”

“As far as I can make out,” said the toad, “they’re amazed that you don’t know about the Queen and…er, the magical ways, what with you being a child of Granny Aching and standing up to the monsters.
Ken
means ‘know.’”

“And his dinner?”

“Forget about his dinner for now,” said the toad. “They thought Granny Aching told you her magic. Hold me up to your ear, will you?” Tiffany did so, and the toad whispered, “Best not to disappoint them, eh?”

She swallowed. “But she never told me about any magic—” she began. And stopped. It was true. Granny Aching hadn’t told her about any magic. But she showed people magic every day.

There was the time when the Baron’s champion hound was caught killing sheep. It was a hunting dog, after all, but it had got out onto the downs and, because sheep run, it had chased….

The Baron knew the penalty for sheep worrying. There were laws on the Chalk, so old that no one remembered who made them, and everyone knew this one: Sheep-killing dogs were killed.

But this dog was worth five hundred gold dollars, and so—the story went—the Baron sent his servant up onto the downs to Granny’s hut on wheels. She was sitting on the step, smoking her pipe and watching the flocks.

The man rode up on his horse and didn’t bother to dismount. That was not a good thing to do if you wanted Granny Aching to be your friend. Iron-shod hooves cut the turf. She didn’t like that.

He said: “The Baron commands that you find a way to save his dog, Mistress Aching. In return, he will give you a hundred silver dollars.”

Granny had smiled at the horizon, puffed at her pipe for a while, and replied: “A man who takes arms against his lord, that man is hanged. A starving man who steals his lord’s sheep, that man is hanged. A dog that kills sheep, that dog is put to death. Those laws are on these hills and these hills are in my bones. What is a baron, that the law be brake for him?”

She went back to staring at the sheep.

“The Baron owns this country,” said the servant. “It is his law.”

The look Granny Aching gave him turned the man’s hair white. That was the story, anyway. But all stories about Granny Aching had a bit of fairy tale about them.

“If it is, as ye say, his law, then let him break it and see how things may then be,” she said.

A few hours later the Baron sent his bailiff, who was far more important but had known Granny Aching for longer. He said: “Mrs. Aching, the Baron requests that you use your influence to save his dog. He will happily give you fifty gold dollars to help ease this difficult situation. I am sure you can see how this will benefit everyone concerned.”

Granny smoked her pipe and stared at the new lambs and said: “Ye speak for your master, your master speaks for his dog. Who speaks for the hills? Where is the Baron, that the law be brake for him?”

They said that when the Baron was told this, he went very quiet. But although he was pompous, and often unreasonable, and far too haughty, he was not stupid. In the evening he walked up to the hut and sat down on the turf nearby. After a while Granny Aching said: “Can I help you, my lord?”

“Granny Aching, I plead for the life of my dog,” said the Baron.

“Bring ye siller? Bring ye gilt?” said Granny Aching.

“No silver. No gold,” said the Baron.

“Good. A law that is brake by siller or gilt is no worthwhile law. And so, my lord?”

“I plead, Granny Aching.”

“Ye try to break the law with a word?”

“That’s right, Granny Aching.”

Granny Aching, the story went, stared at the sunset for a while and then said: “Then be down at the little old stone barn at dawn tomorrow, and we’ll see if an old dog can learn new tricks. There will be a reckoning. Good night to ye.”

Most of the village was hanging around the old stone barn the next morning. Granny arrived with one of the smaller farm wagons. It held a ewe with her newborn lamb. She put them in the barn.

Some of the men turned up with the dog. It was nervous and snappy, having spent the night chained up in a shed, and kept trying to bite the men who were holding it by two leather straps. It was hairy. It had fangs.

The Baron rode up with the bailiff. Granny Aching nodded at them and opened the barn door.

“You’re putting the dog into the barn with a sheep, Mrs. Aching?” said the bailiff. “Do you want it to choke to death on lamb?”

This didn’t get much of a laugh. No one liked the bailiff much.

“We shall see,” said Granny. The men dragged the dog to the doorway, threw it inside the barn, and slammed the door quickly. People rushed to the little windows.

There was the bleating of the lamb, a growl from the dog, and then a baa from the lamb’s mother. But this wasn’t the normal baa of a sheep. It had an edge to it.

Something hit the door and it bounced on its hinges. Inside, the dog yelped.

Granny Aching picked up Tiffany and held her to a window.

The shaken dog was trying to get to its feet, but it didn’t manage it before the ewe charged again, seventy pounds of enraged sheep slamming into it like a battering ram.

Granny lowered Tiffany again and lit her pipe. She puffed it peacefully as the building behind her shook and the dog yelped and whimpered.

After a couple of minutes she nodded at the men. They opened the door.

The dog came out limping on three legs, but it hadn’t managed to get more than a few feet before the ewe shot out behind it and butted it so hard that it rolled over.

It lay still. Perhaps it had learned what would happen if it tried to get up again.

Granny Aching had nodded to the men, who picked the sheep up and dragged it back into the barn.

The Baron had been watching with his mouth open.

“He killed a wild boar last year!” he said. “What did you do to him?”

“He’ll mend,” said Granny Aching, carefully ignoring the question. “’Tis mostly his pride that’s hurt. But he won’t look at a sheep again, you have my thumb on that.” And she licked her right thumb and held it out.

After a moment’s hesitation, the Baron licked his thumb, reached down, and pressed it against hers. Everyone knew what it meant. On the Chalk, a thumb bargain was unbreakable.

“For you, at a word, the law was brake,” said Granny Aching. “Will ye mind that, ye who sit in judgment? Will ye remember this day? Ye’ll have cause to.”

The Baron nodded to her.

“That’ll do,” said Granny Aching, and their thumbs parted.

Next day the Baron technically did give Granny Aching gold, but it was only the gold-colored foil on an ounce of Jolly Sailor, the cheap and horrible pipe tobacco that was the only one Granny Aching would ever smoke. She was always in a bad mood if the peddlers were late and she’d run out. You’d couldn’t bribe Granny Aching for all the gold in the world, but you could definitely attract her attention with an ounce of Jolly Sailor.