The Witch of Clatteringshaws Read Online Free PDF

starched napkin embroidered with a coronet in gold thread. The gold thread scratched his chin.
    “Oh, plague take it!”
said Simon.
    “Have a tissue.”
    The man approaching from the other end of the extremely long dining table pulled a tissue from a gilt container shaped like a crown and passed it to Simon.
    “Thanks,” said Simon, wiping egg yolk off his fingers. “Who are you?”
    “Your Majesty’s court jester. Name’s Rodney Firebrace.”
    “You don’t look very funny.”
    Rodney Firebrace was a tall, stringy, harsh-faced character with a reddish complexion slightly scarred by smallpox, a thin thatch of ginger hair, jacket and trousers of rust-colored broadcloth, and a small silver badge pinned to his lapel that said COURT JESTER BY APPOINTMENT OF H.M . A sharp-eyed gray parrot perched on his shoulder. Nothing about him suggested humor. He said:
    “Court jesters are not necessarily expected to be funny.”
    “Oh? What, then?”
    “They tell the truth at all times. At all costs.”
    “How did you get the job?”
    “I was King Richard’s jester,” Firebrace said. He had a loud, carrying voice, not unlike a bird’s croak. Each time he spoke the parrot on his shoulder raised and lowered its wings and let out a subdued squawk. Now it suddenly remarked:
    “Highly humorous. Ha ha ha. Shoot a second arrow to find the first.”
    “King Richard gave me the job five years ago.”
    Were there many applicants? Simon wondered. Reading his thought, Firebrace went on, “My qualifications were better than those of the nineteen other people applying for the position. They were all music-hall comedians. I had been tossed by a bull. And fallen off a mountain. And I had a university degree from Saint Vigean’s.”
    “What in?”
    “Humor, Its Sources and Uses. And Communication with Bulls.”
    “Well, I’m sure you will be a great help,” said Simon politely. “I am sorry you have just missed my friend Dido. She enjoys a good joke.”
    “The Right Honorable Miss Twite? Is she not in residence here?”
    “She just took off from King’s Wrath station this morning. For Caledonia.”
    “Indeed?” said Rodney Firebrace. “Perhaps that is just as well for Miss Twite.”
    “Oh? Why?”
    “I was just about to warn you. There is a faction moving against Miss Twite. Her position here at court is critical—I should say highly precarious.”
    “This isn’t a joke? You are serious?”
    “Never more so. The Civil Service,” explained Firebrace, “don’t like her.”
    “You mean all the old boys, the Purveyor of the Royal Venison, Keeper of the Privy Purse, and the rest of them—they don’t like Dido?”
    “Not at all. They fear for their own positions. They are afraid that Miss Twite might use her persuasive powers to—”
    “Get me to sack them all and hire younger staff?”
    “Just so. There is a movement to have Miss Twite pushed down the oubliette. Or sent to the Tower on some trumped-up charge.”
    “Highly humorous,” said the parrot. “Ha ha ha.”
    “I didn’t know there
was
an oubliette.”
    “Halfway along the passage to the small Throne Room.”
    “I’ll have it filled in.” Simon made a note on his daily program.
    “Why has Miss Twite gone to Caledonia?”
    “To have a hunt around,” Simon explained, “and see if she can’t find that other applicant for the Throne. For I don’t mind telling you, I’m not above half keen on the job. Now that I’ve tried it.”
    “Ah,” said Firebrace. “I did wonder. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea. Unhappy sits the head that wears a crown.”
    “Highly humorous. Ha ha ha. The second side of the slice toasts faster.”
    “Could you ask your parrot to say something else?”
    “Wiggonholt, shut up.—May I ask,” said Rodney Firebrace, “for which part of the North Country is Miss Twite bound?”
    “Well, that’s one of the problems. Father Sam, you know, the Archbishop—”
    “Yes, he’s my cousin—”
    “—he sometimes gets