A Hat Full of Sky

Page 10

'Hamish can get there on his buzzard,' said Big Yan, stepping aside as a cluster of punching, kicking Feegles rolled past. 'Aye, and he'll come wi' us, but he cannae tak' more'n one passenger,' shouted Rob over the din. 'Can we swim it?' said Daft Wullie, ducking as a stunned Feegle hurtled over his head. The others looked at him. 'Swim it? How can we swim there fra' here, yer daftie?' said Rob Anybody. 'It's just worth consid'ring, that's all,' said Wullie, looking hurt. 'I wuz just tryin' to make a contribution, ye ken? Just wanted to show willin'.'
'The big wee hag left in a cart,' said Big Yan. 'Aye, so what?' said Rob.
'Weel, mebbe we could?'
'Ach, no!' said Rob. 'Showin' oursels tae hags is one thing, but not to other folks! You remember what happened a few years back when Daft Wullie got spotted by that lady who wuz painting the pretty pictures doon in the valley? I dinnae want to have them Folklore Society bigjobs pokin' aroound again!'
'I have an idea, Mister Rob. It's me, Awf'ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle. We could disguise oursels.' Awf'ly Wee Billy Bigchin Mac Feegle always announced himself in full. He seemed to feel that if he didn't tell people who he was, they'd forget about him and he'd disappear. When you're half the size of most grown pictsies you're really short; much shorter and you'd be a hole in the ground. He was the new gonnagle. A gonnagle is the clan's bard and battle poet, but they don't spend all their lives in the same clan. In fact, they're a sort of clan all by themselves. Gonnagles move around among the other clans, making sure the songs and stories get spread around all the Feegles. Awf'ly Wee Billy had come with Jeannie from the Long Lake clan, which often happens. He was very young for a gonnagle, but as Jeannie had said, there was no age limit to gonnagling. If the talent was in you, you gonnagled. And Awf'ly Wee Billy knew all the songs and could play the mousepipes so sadly that outside it would start to rain. 'Aye, lad?' said Rob Anybody kindly. 'Speak up, then.'
'Can we get hold o' some human clothes?' said Awf'ly Wee Billy. 'Because there's an old story about the big feud between the Three Peaks clan and the Windy River clan and the Windy River boys escaped by making a tattie-bogle walk, and the men o' Three Peaks thought it was a bigjob and kept oot o' its way.' The others looked puzzled, and Awf'ly Wee Billy remembered that they were men of the Chalk and had probably never seen a tattie-bogle. 'A scarecrow?' he said. 'It's like a bigjob made o' sticks, wi' clothes on, for to frighten away the birdies fra' the crops? Now, the song says the Windy River's kelda used magic to make it walk, but I reckon it was done by cunnin' and strength.' He sang about it. They listened. He explained how to make a human that would walk. They looked at one another. It was a mad, desperate plan, which was very dangerous and risky and would require tremendous strength and bravery to make it work. Put like that, they agreed to it instantly. Tiffany found that there was more than chores and the research, though. There was what Miss Level called 'filling what's empty and emptying what's full'. Usually only one of Miss Level's bodies went out at a time. People thought Miss Level was twins, and she made sure they continued to do so, but she found it a little bit safer all round to keep the bodies apart. Tiffany could see why. You only had to watch both of Miss Level when she was eating. The bodies would pass plates to one another without saying a word, sometimes they'd eat off one another's forks, and it was rather strange to see one person burp and the other one say 'Oops, pardon me'. 'Filling what's empty and emptying what's full' meant wandering round the local
villages and the isolated farms and, mostly, doing medicine. There were always bandages to change or expectant mothers to talk to. Witches did a lot of midwifery, which is a kind of 'emptying what's full', but Miss Level, wearing her pointy hat, had only to turn up at a cottage for other people to suddenly come visiting, by sheer accident. And there was an awful lot of gossip and tea-drinking. Miss Level moved in a twitching, living world of gossip, although Tiffany noticed that she picked up a lot more than she passed on. It seemed to be a world made up entirely of women, but occasionally, out in the lanes, a man would strike up a conversation about the weather and somehow, by some sort of code, an ointment or a potion would get handed over. Tiffany couldn't quite work out how Miss Level got paid. Certainly the basket she carried filled up more than it emptied. They'd walk past a cottage and a woman would come scurrying out with a fresh-baked loaf or a jar of pickles, even though Miss Level hadn't stopped there. But they'd spend an hour somewhere else, stitching up the leg of a farmer who'd been careless with an axe, and get a cup of tea and a stale biscuit. It didn't seem fair. 'Oh, it evens out,' said Miss Level, as they walked on through the woods. 'You do what you can. People give what they can, when they can. Old Slapwick there, with the leg, he's as mean as a cat, but there'll be a big cut of beef on my doorstep before the week's end, you can bet on it. His wife will see to it. And pretty soon people will be killing their pigs for the winter, and I'll get more brawn, ham, bacon and sausages turning up than a family could eat in a year.'
'You do? What do you do with all that food?'
'Store it,' said Miss Level. 'But you-'
'I store it in other people. It's amazing what you can store in other people.' Miss Level laughed at Tiffany's expression. 'I mean, I take what I don't need round to those who don't have a pig, or who're going through a bad patch, or who don't have anyone to remember them.'
'But that means they'll owe you a favour!'
'Right! And so it just keeps on going round. It all works out.'
'I bet some people are too mean to pay-'
'Not pay,' said Miss Level, severely. 'A witch never expects payment and never asks for it and just hopes she never needs to. But, sadly, you are right.' y And then what happens?'
'What do you mean?'
'You stop helping them, do you?'
'Oh, no,' said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. 'You can't not help people just because they're stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone's poor round here. If I don't help them, who will?'
'Granny Aching . . . that is, my grandmother said someone has to speak up for them as has no voices,' Tiffany volunteered after a moment. 'Was she a witch?' I'm not sure,' said Tiffany. 'I think so, but she didn't know she was. She mostly
lived by herself in an old shepherding hut up on the downs.'
'She wasn't a cackler, was she?' said Miss Level, and when she saw Tiffany's expression she said hurriedly, 'Sorry, sorry. But it can happen, when you're a witch who doesn't know it. You're like a ship with no rudder. But obviously she wasn't like that, I can tell.'
'She lived on the hills and talked to them and she knew more about sheep than anybody!' said Tiffany hotly. 'I'm sure she did, I'm sure she did-'
'She never cackled!'
'Good, good,' said Miss Level soothingly. 'Was she clever at medicine?' Tiffany hesitated. 'Urn . . . only with sheep,' she said, calming down. 'But she was very good. Especially if it involved turpentine. Mostly if it involved turpentine, actually. But always she . . . was . . . just . . . there. Even when she wasn't actually there 'Yes,' said Miss Level. 'You know what I mean?' said Tiffany. 'Oh, yes,' said Miss Level. 'Your Granny Aching lived down on the uplands-'
'No, up on the downland,' Tiffany corrected her. 'Sorry, up on the downland, with the sheep, but people would look up sometimes, look up at the hills, knowing she was there somewhere, and say to themselves “What would Granny Aching do?” or “What would Granny Aching say if she found out?” or “Is this the sort of thing Granny Aching would be angry about?”' said Miss Level. 'Yes?' Tiffany narrowed her eyes. It was true. She remembered when Granny Aching had hit a pedlar who'd overloaded his donkey and was beating it. Granny usually used only words, and not many of them. The man had been so frightened by her sudden rage that he'd stood there and taken it. It had frightened Tiffany, too. Granny, who seldom said anything without thinking about it for ten minutes beforehand, had struck the wretched man twice across the face in a brief blur of movement. And then news had got around, all along the Chalk. For a while, at least, people were a little more gentle with their animals .. . For months after that moment with the pedlar, carters and drovers and farmers all across the downs would hesitate before raising a whip or a stick, and think: Suppose Granny Aching is watching? But- 'How did you know that?' she said. 'Oh, I guessed. She sounds like a witch to me, whatever she thought she was. A good one, too.' Tiffany inflated with inherited pride. 'Did she help people?' Miss Level added. The pride deflated a bit. The instant answer 'yes' jumped onto her tongue, and yet. . . Granny Aching hardly ever came down off the hills, except for Hogswatch and the early lambing. You seldom saw her in the village unless the pedlar who sold Jolly Sailor tobacco was late on his rounds, in which case she'd be down in a hurry and a flurry of greasy black skirts to cadge a pipeful off one of the old men. But there wasn't a person on the Chalk, from the Baron down, who didn't owe
something to Granny. And what they owed to her, she made them pay to others. She always knew who was short of a favour or two. 'She made them help one another/ she said. 'She made them help themselves.' In the silence that followed, Tiffany heard the birds singing by the road. You got a lot of birds here, but she missed the high scream of the buzzards. Miss Level sighed. 'Not many of us are that good,' she said. 'If I was that good, we wouldn't be going to visit old Mr Weavall again.' Tiffany said 'Oh dear' inside. Most days included a visit to Mr Weavall. Tiffany dreaded them. Mr Weavall's skin was paper-thin and yellowish. He was always in the same old armchair, in a tiny room in a small cottage that smelled of old potatoes and was surrounded by a more or less overgrown garden. He'd be sitting bolt upright, his hands on two walking sticks, wearing a suit that was shiny with age, staring at the door. 'I make sure he has something hot every day, although he eats like a bird,' Miss Level had said. 'And old Widow Tussy down the lane does his laundry, such as it is. He's ninety-one, you know.' Mr Weavall had very bright eyes and chatted away to and at them as they tidied up the room. The first time Tiffany had met him he'd called her Mary. Sometimes he still did. And he'd grabbed her wrist with surprising force as she walked past ... It had been a real shock, that claw of a hand suddenly gripping her. You could see blue veins under the skin. 'I shan't be a burden on anyone/ he'd said urgently. 'I got money put by for when I go. My boy Toby won't have nothin' to worry about. I can pay my way! I want the proper funeral show, right? With the black horses and the plumes and the mutes and a knife-and-fork tea for everyone afterwards. I've written it all down, fair and square. Check in my box to make sure, will you? That witch woman's always hanging around here!' Tiffany had given Miss Level a despairing look. She'd nodded, and pointed to an old wooden box tucked under Mr Weavall's chair. It had turned out to be full of coins, mostly copper, but there were quite a few silver ones. It looked like a fortune, and for a moment she'd wished she had as much money. There's a lot of coins in here, Mr Weavall,' she'd said. Mr Weavall relaxed. 'Ah, that's right,' he'd said. 'Then I won't be a burden.' Today Mr Weavall was asleep when they called on him, snoring with his mouth open and his yellow-brown teeth showing. But he awoke in an instant, stared at them and then said, 'My boy Toby's coming to see I Sat'day.'
'That's nice, Mr Weavall,' said Miss Level, plumping up his cushions. 'We'll get the place nice and tidy.'