‘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!’
‘There was only one 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 Feegles. 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.
“Cuz 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.’
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 favourite.’
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 Feegles, 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 dinnae give oor names,’ he muttered. But another Feegle, somewhere safe at the back, said, ‘Wheest! You cannae 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 dinnae ken o’ the Quin? An’ you the wean o’ Granny Aching, who had these hills in her bones? Ye dinnae 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 hasnae got, and you dinnae 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 stones 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 ‘II see if an old dog can learn new tricks. There will be a reckoning. Good night to you.’
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 new-born lamb. She put them in the barn.
Some of the men turned up with the dog. It was nervy 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.