The Shepherd's Crown Read Free

laughed. ‘Jeannie, you are always right. But I am a witch so pride is in the bones.’ That brought to mind Granny Weatherwax – the witch all the other witches thought of as the wisest and most senior of them all. When Granny Weatherwax said things,she never sounded proud – but she didn’t need to. It was just there, built right into her essence. In fact, whatever a witch needed in her bones, Granny Weatherwax had it in great big shovelfuls. Tiffany hoped, one day, that she might be that strong a witch herself.
    ‘Weel, that’s guid, so it is,’ said the kelda. ‘Ye’re oor hag o’ the hills and we need oor hag to ha’ some pride. But we’d alsolike ye to have a life of your ain.’ Her solemn little gaze was fixed on Tiffany now. ‘So off ye gae and follow where the wind blows ye.’
    The wind down in the Shires was angry, blowing everywhere as if it was upset, howling around the chimneys of Lord Swivel’s mansion, which stood surrounded by acres of parkland and could only be reached by a long drive – ruling out visits by anyone not in possessionof at least a decent horse.
    That put paid to the majority of the ordinary people thereabouts, who were mostly farmers, and who were too busy to do any such thing anyway. Any horse they had was generally large and hairy-legged and usually seen attached to carts. The skinny, half-mad horses that pranced up the drive or pulled coaches up it were normally conveying a very different class of man:one who always had land and money, but often very little chin. And whose wife sometimes resembled his horse.
    Lord Swivel’s father had inherited money and the title from his father, a great master builder, but he had been a drunkard and had wasted almost all of it. fn3 Nevertheless young Harold Swivel had wheeled and dealed, and yes, swivelled and swindled, until he had restored the family fortune,and had added two wings to the family mansion which he filled with expensively ugly objects.
    He had three sons, which pleased him greatly in that his wife had produced one extra over and above the usual ‘heir and spare’. Lord Swivel liked to be one up on everyone else, even if the one up was only in the form of a son he didn’t overly care for.
    Harry, the eldest, didn’t go to school much becausehe was now dealing with the estate, helping his father and learning who was worth talking to and who wasn’t.
    Number two was Hugh, who had suggested to his father that he would like to go into the church. His father had said, ‘Only if it’s the Church of Om, but none of the others. I’m not having no son of mine fooling around with cultic activities!’ fn4 Om was handily silent, thereby enabling hispriests to interpret his wishes how they chose. Amazingly, Om’s wishes rarely translated into instructions like ‘Feed the poor’ or ‘Help the elderly’ but more along the lines of ‘You need a splendid residence’ or ‘Why not have seven courses for dinner?’ So Lord Swivel felt that a clergyman in the family could in fact be useful.
    His third son was Geoffrey. And nobody quite knew what to make ofGeoffrey. Not least, Geoffrey himself.
    The tutor Lord Swivel employed for his boys was named Mr Wiggall. Geoffrey’s older brothers called him ‘Wiggler’, sometimes even to his face. But for Geoffrey Mr Wiggall was a godsend. The tutor had arrived with a huge crate of his own books, only too aware that some great houses barely had a single book in them, unless the books were about battles of thepast in which a member of the family had been spectacularly and stupidly heroic. Mr Wiggall and his wonderful books taught Geoffrey about the great philosophers Ly Tin Weedle, Orinjcrates, Xeno and Ibid, and the celebrated inventors Goldeneyes Silverhand Dactylos and Leonard of Quirm, and Geoffrey started to discover what he might make of himself.
    When they weren’t reading and studying, Mr Wiggalltook Geoffrey to dig up things – old bones and old places – around the Shires,