The landlord sat down with his customers now, and said to Joe, ‘How do you think the young Baron is settling in?’
The relationship between the Baron and Mr Aching, his tenant, was not that unusual in the countryside. The Baron owned the land. Everyone knew that. He also owned all the farms in the neighbourhood, and the farmers, his tenants, farmed the land for him, paying rent every quarter day. He could, if he chose, take a farm back and throw a farmer and his family out. In the past, there had been barons who had occasionally indulged in displays of authority such as burning down cottages and throwing out whole families, sometimes just on a whim, but mostly as a daft way of showing who had the real power. They soon learned. Power means nothing without a decent harvest in the barn, and a flock of Sunday dinners grazing on the hills.
Roland, the young Baron, had made a bit of a rocky start – made worse, it has to be said, by his new mother-in-law, a duchess who made sure that everyone knew it too. But he soon learned. Knowing that he wasn’t yet experienced at farming the land, he had followed his father’s general practice of wisely leaving his farmers to run their farms and their workers as they saw fit. Now everyone was happy.
Also wisely, Roland would from time to time talk to Joe Aching, as had his father before him, and Joe, a kindly man, would offer to speak about the things the Baron’s land agent and rent collectors might not see, such as a widow who had fallen on bad times or a mother struggling to cope after her husband had been trampled by a bad-tempered young bull. Joe Aching would point out that a certain amount of charity would be a good thing and, to give the young Baron his due, he would do what he was told in a strange sort of way, and the widow would find that somehow she had managed to pay her rent in advance, so owed nothing for the time being, and a helpful young lad from the estate who needed to learn farming might turn up at the young mother’s little holding.
‘I don’t like to judge too soon,’ said Joe, leaning back on the bench and looking solemn in a way only a man who had the right to the chair on a Saturday had the right to look. ‘But to tell you the truth, he’s doing rather well. Picking it up as he goes along, you might say.’
‘That’s good then,’ said Thomas Greengrass. ‘Looks like he’s going to follow in the footsteps of his old man.’
‘We’ll be lucky then. The old Baron was a good man – tough on the outside, but he knew what was what.’
Parsley smiled. ‘His young lady, the Baroness, has learned a lot of lessons without being taught them – have you noticed that? She’s always around the place talking to people, not putting on airs. The wife likes her,’ he added with a sage nod. If the wife approved, well, that was good. It meant peace at home, and every countryman wanted that after a day’s hard work. ‘I heard tell she’d been round to say well done whenever a man’s wife was having kids.’
On that subject, Robert Thick said, ‘My Josephine will be having another one shortly.’
Somebody laughed and said, ‘That’s pints all round, you know.’
‘Be sure to have a word with Joe’s Tiffany then,’ said Thomas Greengrass. ‘When it comes to birthing a child, I’ve never seen better.’
Over his pint, Thomas added, ‘I saw her whizzing past yesterday. It made me right proud, it really did, a girl of the Chalk. I’m sure you must be just as proud, Joe.’
Everyone knew Tiffany Aching, of course; had done ever since she was very small and played with their own children. They didn’t much like witches up on the Chalk, but Tiffany was their witch. And a good witch to boot. Most importantly, she was a girl of the Chalk. She knew the worth of sheep, and they’d seen her running around in her pants when she was growing up. So that was all right then.
Tiffany’s father tried to smile as he reached down and gave his dog a pork scratching. ‘A present for you, Jester.’ He looked up. ‘Of course, Tiffany’s mother would like to see her here more often, though she’s made up about our Tiff; can’t stop telling people about what she does, and neither can I.’ He looked over at the landlord. ‘Another pint for me when you’ve time please, John.’
‘Of course, Joe,’ said John Parsley, heading into the bar and returning with the foaming tankard in his hand.
As the pint was passed down to its destination, Joe said, ‘It’s strange, you know, when I think about how much time our Tiffany spends over in Lancre these days.’
‘Be a shame if she moved up there,’ Dick Handly commented. And the thought was there, floating in the air, though nobody said anything further. Not to Joe Aching, not on a Saturday.
‘Well, she’s always very busy,’ Joe said slowly, tucking Dick’s comment away in his head to think about later. ‘Lot of babies round here, lads!’ This brought a smile.