"Oh, they are when they're conscious," said Granny, waving a hand vaguely "They project this . . . this . . . when people look at them, they see beauty, they see something they want to please. They can look just like you want them to look. 'S'called glamour. You can tell when elves are around. People act funny. They stop thinking clear. Don't you know anything?"
"I thought . . . elves were just stories . . . like the Tooth Fairy. . ."
"Nothing funny about the Tooth Fairy," said Granny. "Very hard-working woman. I'll never know how she manages with the ladder and everything. No. Elves are real. Oh, drat. Listen. . ."
She turned, and held up a finger.
"Feudal system, right?"
"What?"
"Feudal system! Pay attention. Feudal system. King on top, then barons and whatnot, then everyone else . . . witches off to one side a bit," Granny added diplomatically. She steepled her fingers. "Feudal system. Like them pointy buildings heathen kings get buried in. Understand?"
"Yes."
"Right. That's how the elves see things, yes? When they get into a world, everyone else is on the bottom. Slaves. Worse than slaves. Worse than animals, even. They take what they want, and they want everything. But worst of all, the worst bit is . . . they read your mind. They hear what you think, and in self-defence you think what they want. Glamour. And it's barred windows at night, and food out for the fairies, and turning around three times before you talks about 'em, and horseshoes over the door."
"I thought that sort of thing was, you know," the king grinned sickly, "folklore?"
"Of course it's folklore, you stupid man!"
"I do happen to be king, you know," said Verence reproachfully.
"You stupid king, your majesty,"
"Thank you."
"I mean it doesn't mean it's not true! Maybe it gets a little muddled over the years, folks forget details, they forget why they do things. Like the horseshoe thing."
"I know my granny had one over the door," said the king.
"There you are. Nothing to do with its shape. But if you lives in an old cottage and you're poor, it's probably the nearest bit of iron with holes in it that you can find."
"Ah."
"The thing about elves is they've got no . . . begins with m," Granny snapped her fingers irritably.
"Manners?"
"Hah! Right, but no."
"Muscle? Mucus? Mystery?"
"No. No. No. Means like . . . seein' the other person's point of view."
Verence tried to see the world from a Granny Weatherwax perspective, and suspicion dawned.
"Empathy?"
"Right. None at all. Even a hunter, a good hunter, can feel for the quarry. That's what makes 'em a good hunter. Elves aren't like that. They're cruel for fun, and they can't understand things like mercy. They can't understand that anything apart from themselves might have feelings. They laugh a lot, especially if they've caught a lonely human or a dwarf or a troll. Trolls might be made out of rock, your majesty, but I'm telling you that a troll is your brother compared to elves. In the head, I mean."
"But why don't I know all this?"
"Glamour. Elves are beautiful. They've got," she spat the word, "style. Beauty. Grace. That's what matters. If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember. They remember the glamour. All the rest of it, all the truth of it, becomes . . . old wives' tales."
"Magrat's never said anything about them."
Granny hesitated.
"Magrat doesn't know too much about elves," she said. "Hah. She ain't even a young wife yet. They're not something that gets talked about a lot these days. It's not good to talk about them. It's better if everyone forgets about them. They . . . come when they're called. Not called like 'Cooee.' Called inside people's heads. It's enough for people just to want them to be here."
Verence waved his hands in the air.
"I'm still learning about monarchy," he said. "I don't understand this stuff."
"You don't have to understand. You're a king. Listen. You know about weak places in the world? Where it joins other worlds?"
"No."
"There's one up on the moor. That's why the Dancers were put up around it. They're a kind of wall."
"But sometimes the barriers between worlds is weaker, see? Like tides. At circle time."
"Ah."
"And if people act stupidly then, even the Dancers can't keep the gateway shut. 'Cos where the world's thin, even the wrong thought can make the link."
"Ah."
Verence felt the conversation had orbited back to that area where he could make a contribution.
"Stupidly?" he said.
"Calling them. Attracting them."
"Ah. So what do I do?"
"Just go on reigning. I think we're safe. They can't get through. I've stopped the girls, so there'll be no more channeling. You keep this one firmly under lock and key, and don't tell Magrat. No sense in worrying her, is there? Something came through, but I'm keeping an eye on it."
Granny rubbed her hands together in grim satisfaction.
"I think I've got it sorted," she said.
She blinked.
She pinched the bridge of her nose.
"What did I just say?" she said.
"Uh. You said you thought you'd got it sorted," said the king.
Granny Weatherwax blinked.
"That's right," she said. "I said that. Yes. And I'm in the castle, aren't I? Yes."
"Are you all right. Mistress Weatherwax?" said the king, his voice taut with sudden worry.
"Fine, fine. Fine. In the castle. And the children are all right, too?"
"Sorry?"
She blinked again.
"What?"
"You don't look well. . ."
Granny screwed up her face and shook her head. "Yes. The castle. I'm me, you're you, Gytha's upstairs with Magrat. That's right." She focused on the king. "Just a bit of . . . of overtiredness there. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about at all."
Nanny Ogg looked doubtfully at Magrat's preparation.
"A mouldy bread poultice doesn't sound very magical to me," she said.
"Goodie Whemper used to swear by it. But I don't know what we can do about the coma."
Magrat thumbed hopefully through the crackling, ancient pages. Her ancestral witches had written things down pretty much as they occurred to them, so that quite important spells and observations would be interspersed with comments about the state of their feet.
"It says here 'The smalle pointy stones sometimes found are knowne as Elf-shot, beinge the heads of Elf arrows from Times Past.' " That's all I can find. And there's a drawing. But I've seen these little stones around, too."
"Oh, there's lots of them," said Nanny, bandaging Diamanda's shoulder. "Dig 'em up all the time, in my garden."
"But elves don't shoot people! Elves are good."
"They probably just fired at Esme and the girl in fun, like?"
"But-"
"Look, dear, you're going to be queen. It's an important job. You look after the king now, and let me and Esme look after . . . other stuff."
"Being Queen? It's all tapestry and walking around in unsuitable dresses! I know Granny. She doesn't like anything that's . . . that's got style and grace. She's so sour."
"I daresay she's got her reasons," said Nanny amiably. "Well, that's got the girl patched up. What shall we do with her now?"
"We've got dozens of spare bedrooms," said Magrat, "and they're all ready for the guests. We can put her in one of them. Um. Nanny?"
"Yes?"
"Would you like to be a bridesmaid?"
"Not really, dear. Bit old for that sort of thing." Nanny hovered. "There isn't anything you need to ask me, though, is there?"
"What do you mean?"
"What with your mum being dead and you having no female relatives and everything. . ."
Magrat still looked puzzled.
"After the wedding, is what I'm hinting about," said Nanny.
"Oh, that. No, most of that's being done by a caterer. The cook here isn't much good at canapes and things."
Nanny looked carefully at the ceiling.
"And what about after that?" she said. "If you catch my meaning."
"I'm getting a lot of girls in to do the clearing up. Look, don't worry. I've thought of everything. I wish you and Granny wouldn't treat me as if I don't know anything."
Nanny coughed. "Your man," she said. "Been around a bit, I expect? Been walking out with dozens of young women, I've no doubt."
"Why do you say that? I don't think he has. Fools don't have much of a private life and, of course, he's been very busy since he's been king. He's a bit shy with girls."
Nanny gave up.
"Oh, well," she said, "I'm sure you'll work it all out as you-"
Granny and the king reappeared.
"How's the girl?" said Granny.
"We took out the arrow and cleaned up the wound, anyway," said Magrat. "But she won't wake up. Best if she stays here."
"You sure?" said Granny. "She needs keeping an eye on. I've got a spare bedroom."
"She shouldn't be moved," said Magrat, briskly.
"They've put their mark on her," said Granny. "You sure you know how to deal with it?"
"I do know it's quite a nasty wound," said Magrat, briskly.
"I ain't exactly thinking about the wound," said Granny. "She's been touched by them is what I mean. She's-"
"I'm sure I know how to deal with a sick person," said Magrat. "I'm not totally stupid, you know."
"She's not to be left alone," Granny persisted.
"There'll be plenty of people around," said Verence. "The guests start arriving tomorrow."
"Being alone isn't the same as not having other people around," said Granny.
"This is a castle. Granny."
"Right. Well. We won't keep you, then," said Granny. "Come, Gytha."
Nanny Ogg helped herself to an elderly lamb chop from under one of the silver covers, and waved it vaguely at the royal pair.
"Have fun," she said. "Insofar as that's possible."
"Gytha!"
"Coming."
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.
"Well, that's it," said Nanny Ogg, as the witches walked out over the castle's drawbridge. "Well done, Esme."
"It ain't over," said Granny Weatherwax.
"You said yourself they can't get through now. No one else round here's going to try any magic at the stones, that's sure enough."
"Yes, but it'll be circle time for another day or so yet. Anything could happen."
"That Diamanda girl's out of it, and you've put the wind up the others," said Nanny Ogg, tossing the lamb bone into the dry moat. "Ain't no one else going to call 'em, I know that."
"There's still the one in the dungeon."
"You want to get rid of it?" said Nanny. "I'll send our Shawn to King Ironfoundersson up at Copperhead, if you like. Or I could hop on the old broomstick meself and go and drop the word to the Mountain King. The dwarfs and trolls'll take it off our hands like a shot. No more problem."
Granny ignored this.
"There's something else," she said. "Something we haven't thought of. She'll still be looking for a way."
They'd reached the town square now. She surveyed it. Of course, Verence was king and that was right and proper, and this was his kingdom and that was right and proper too. But in a deeper sense the kingdom belonged to her. And to Gytha Ogg, of course. Verence's writ only ran to the doings of mankind; even the dwarfs and trolls didn't acknowledge him as king, although they were very polite about it. But when it came to the trees and the rocks and the soil. Granny Weatherwax saw it as hers. She was sensitive to its moods.
It was still being watched. She could sense the watchfulness. Sufficiently close examination changes the thing being observed, and what was being observed was the whole country. The whole country was under attack, and here she was, her mind unravelling . . .
"Funny thing," said Nanny Ogg, to no one in particular, "while I was sitting up there at the Dancers this morning I thought, funny thing. . ."
"What're you going on about now?"
"I remember when I was young there was a girl like Diamanda. Bad-tempered and impatient and talented and a real pain in the bum to the old witches. I don't know if you happen to remember her, by any chance?"
They passed Jason's forge, which rang to the sound of his hammer.
"I never forgot her," said Granny, quietly.
"Funny thing, how things go round in circles . . ."
"No they don't," said Granny Weatherwax firmly. "I wasn't like her. You know what the old witches round here were like. Set in their ways. No more than a bunch of old wart-charmers. And I wasn't rude to them. I was just . . . firm. Forthright. I stood up for meself. Part of being a witch is standing up for yourself — you're grinning."
"Just wind, I promise."
"It's completely different with her. No one's ever been able to say I wasn't open to new ideas."
"Well known for being open to new ideas, you are," said Nanny Ogg. "I'm always saying, that Esme Weatherwax, she's always open to new ideas."
"Right." Granny Weatherwax looked up at the forested hills around the town, and frowned.
"The thing is," she said, "girls these days don't know how to think with a clear mind. You've got to think clearly and not be distracted. That's Magrat for you, always being distracted. It gets in the way of doing the proper thing." She stopped. "I can feel her, Gytha. The Queen of the Fairies. She can get her mind past the stones. Blast that girl! She's got a way in. She's everywhere. Everywhere I look with my mind, I can smell her."
"Everything's going to be all right," said Nanny, patting her on the shoulder. "You'll see."
"She's looking for a way," Granny repeated.
"Good morrow, brothers, and wherehap do we whist this merry day?" said Carter the baker.
The rest of the Lancre Morris Men looked at him.
"You on some kind of medication or what?" said Weaver the thatcher.
"Just trying to enter into the spirit of the thing," said Carter.
"That's how rude mechanicals talk."
"Who're rude mechanicals?" said Baker the weaver.
"They're the same as Comic Artisans, I think," said Carter the baker.
"I asked my mum what artisans are," said Jason.
"Yeah?"
"They're us."
"And we're Rude Mechanicals as well?" said Baker the weaver.
"I reckon."
"Bum!"
"Well, we certainly don't talk like these buggers in the writing," said Carter the baker. "I never said 'fol-de-rol' in my life. And I can't understand any of the jokes."
"You ain't supposed to understand the jokes, this is a play," said Jason.
"Drawers!" said Baker the weaver.
"Oh, shut up. And push the cart."
"Don't see why we couldn't do the Stick and Bucket Dance . . ." mumbled Tailor the other weaver.
"We're not doing the Stick and Bucket dance! I never want to hear any more ever about the Stick and Bucket dance! I still get twinges in my knee! So shut up about the Stick and Bucket dance!"
"Belly!" shouted Baker, who wasn't a man to let go of an idea.
The cart containing the props bumped and skidded on the rutted track.
Jason had to admit that Morris dancing was a lot easier than acting. People didn't keep turning up to watch and giggle. Small children didn't stand around jeering. Weaver and Thatcher were in almost open rebellion now, and mucking up the words. The evenings were becoming a constant search for somewhere to rehearse.
Even the forest wasn't private enough. It was amazing how people would just happen to be passing.
Weaver stopped pushing, and wiped his brow.
"You'd have thought the Blasted Oak would've been safe," he said. "Half a mile from the nearest path, and damn me if after five minutes you can't move for charcoal burners, hermits, trappers, tree tappers, hunters, trolls, bird-limers, hurdle-makers, swine-herds, truffle hunters, dwarfs, bodgers and suspicious buggers with big coats on. I'm surprised there's room in the forest for the bloody trees. Where to now?"
They'd reached a crossroads, if such it could be called.
"Don't remember this one," said Carpenter the poacher. "Thought I knew all the paths around here."
"That's 'cos you only ever sees 'em in the dark," said Jason.
"Yeah, everyone knows 'tis your delight on a shining night," said Thatcher the carter.
"Tis his delight every night," said Jason.
"Hey," said Baker the weaver, "we're getting really good at this rude mechanism, ain't we?"
"Let's go right," said Jason.
"Nah, it's all briars and thorns that way."
"All right, then, left then."
"It's all winding," said Weaver.
"What about the middle road?" said Carter.
Jason peered ahead.
There was a middle track, hardly more than an animal path, which wound away under shady trees. Ferns grew thickly alongside it. There was a general green, rich, dark feel to it, suggested by the word "bosky[22]"
His blacksmith's senses stood up and screamed.
"Not that way," he said.
"Ah, come on," said Weaver. "What's wrong with it?"
"Goes up to the Dancers, that path does," said Jason. "Me mam said no one was to go up to the Dancers 'cos of them young women dancing round 'em in the nudd."
"Yeah, but they've been stopped from that," said Thatcher. "Old Granny Weatherwax put her foot down hard and made 'em put their drawers on."
"And they ain't to go there anymore, neither," said Carter. "So it'll be nice and quiet for the rehearsing."
"Me mam said no one was to go there," said Jason, a shade uncertainly.
"Yeah, but she probably meant . . . you know . . . with magical intent," said Carter. "Nothing magical about prancing around in wigs and stuff."
"Right," said Thatcher. "And it'll be really private."
"And," said Weaver, "if any young women fancies sneaking back up there to dance around without their drawers on, we'll be sure to see 'em."
There was a moment of absolute, introspective silence.
"I reckon," said Thatcher, voicing the unspoken views of nearly all of them, "we owes it to the community."
"We-ell," said Jason, "me mam said . . ."
"Anyway, your mum's a fine one to talk," said Weaver. "My dad said that when he was young, your mum hardly ever had-"
"Oh, all right," said Jason, clearly outnumbered. "Can't see it can do any harm. We're only actin'. It's . . . it's make-believe. It's not as if it's anything real. But no one's to do any dancing. Especially, and I want everyone to be absolutely definite about this, the Stick and Bucket dance."
"Oh, we'll be acting all right," said Weaver. "And keeping watch as well, o'course."
"It's our duty to the community," said Thatcher, again.
"Make-believe is bound to be all right," said Jason, uncertainly.
Clang boinng clang ding . . .
The sound echoed around Lancre.
Grown men, digging in their gardens, flung down their spades and hurried for the safety of their cottages . . .
Clang boinnng goinng ding . . .
Women appeared in doorways and yelled desperately for their children to come in at once . . .
. . . BANG buggrit Dong boinng . . .
Shutters thundered shut. Some men, watched by their frightened families, poured water on the fire and tried to stuff sacks up the chimney . . .
Nanny Ogg lived alone, because she said old people needed their pride and independence. Besides, Jason lived on one side, and he or his wife whatshername could easily be roused by means of a boot applied heavily to the wall, and Shawn lived on the other side and Nanny had got him to fix up a long length of string with some tin cans on it in case his presence was required. But this was only for emergencies, such as when she wanted a cup of tea or felt bored.
Bond drat clang . . .
Nanny Ogg had no bathroom but she did have a tin bath, which normally hung on a nail on the back of the privy. Now she was dragging it indoors. It was almost up the garden, after being bounced off various trees, walls, and garden gnomes on the way.
Three large black kettles steamed by her fireside. Beside them were half a dozen towels, the loofah, the pumice stone, the soap, the soap for when the first soap got lost, the ladle for fishing spiders out, the waterlogged rubber duck with the prolapsed squeaker, the bunion chisel, the big scrubbing brush, the small scrubbing brush, the scrubbing brush on a stick for difficult crevices, the banjo, the thing with the pipes and spigots that no one ever really knew the purpose of, and a bottle of Klatchian Nights bath essence, one drop of which could crinkle paint.
Bong clang slam . . .
Everyone in Lancre had learned to recognize Nanny's pre-ablutive activities, out of self-defense.
"But it ain't April!" neighbours told themselves, as they drew the curtains.
In the house just up the hill from Nanny Ogg's cottage Mrs. Skindle grabbed her husband's arm.
"The goat's still outside!"
"Are you mad? I ain't going out there! Not now!"
"You know what happened last time! It was paralysed all down one side for three days, man, and we couldn't get it down off the roof!"
Mr. Skindle poked his head out of the door. It had all gone quiet. Too quiet.
"She's probably pouring the water in," he said.
"You've got a minute or two," said his wife. "Go on, or we'll be drinking yoghurt for weeks."
Mr. Skindle took down a halter from behind the door, and crept out to where his goat was tethered near the hedge. It too had learned to recognize the bathtime ritual, and was rigid with apprehension.
There was no point in trying to drag it. Eventually he picked it up bodily.
There was a distant but insistent sloshing noise, and the bonging sound of a floating pumice stone bouncing on the side of a tin bath.
Mr. Skindle started to run.
Then there was the distant tinkle of a banjo being tuned.
The world held its breath.
Then it came, like a tornado sweeping across a prairie.
"AAaaaaeeeeeee-"
Three flowerpots outside the door cracked, one after the other. Shrapnel whizzed past Mr. Skindle's ear.
"-wizzaaardsah staaafff has a knobontheend, knobontheend-"
He threw the goat through the doorway and leapt after it. His wife was waiting, and slammed the door shut behind him.
The whole family, including the goat, got under the table.
It wasn't that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.
There had been plenty of singers whose high notes could smash a glass, but Nanny's high C could clean it.
The Lancre Morris Men sat glumly on the turf, passing an earthenware jug between them. It had not been a good rehearsal.
"Don't work, does it?" said Thatcher. "'S'not funny, that I do know," said Weaver. "Can't see the king killing himself laughing at us playing a bunch of mechanical artisans not being very good at doin' a play."
"You're just no good at it," said Jason. "We're sposed to be no good at it," said Weaver. "Yeah, but you're no good at acting like someone who's ho good at acting," said Tinker. "I don't know how, but you ain't. You can't expect all the fine lords and ladies-"
A breeze blew over the moor, tasting of ice at midsummer.
"-to laugh at us not being any good at being no good at acting."
"I don't see what's funny about a bunch of rude artisans trying to do a play anyway," said Weaver.
Jason shrugged.
"It says all the gentry-"
A tang on the wind, the sharp tin taste of snow . . .
"-in Ankh-Morpork laughed at it for weeks and weeks," he said. "It was on Broad Way for three months."
"What's Broad Way?"
"That's where all the theatres are. The Dysk, Lord Wynkin's Men, the Bearpit . . ."
"They'd laugh at any damn thing down there," said Weaver. "Anyway, they all think we're all simpletons up here. They all think we say oo-aah and sings daft folk songs and has three brain cells huddlin' together for warmth 'cos of drinking scumble all the time."
"Yeah. Pass that jug."
"Swish city bastards."
"They don't know what it's like to be up to the armpit in a cow's backside on a snowy night. Hah!"
"And there ain't one of 'em that — what're you talking about? You ain't got a cow."
"No, but I know what it's like."
"They don't know what it's like to get one wellie sucked off in a farmyard full of gyppoe and that horrible moment where you waves the foot around knowin' that wherever you puts it down it's going to go through the crust."
The stoneware jug glugged gently as it was passed from hand to unsteady hand.
"True. That's very true. And you ever seen 'em Morris dancing? "Muff to make you hang up your hanky."
"What, Morris dancing in a city?"
"Well, down in Sto Helit, anyway. Bunch o' soft wizards and merchants. I watched 'em a whole hour and there wasn't even a groinin'."
"Swish city bastards. Comin' up here, takin' our jobs. . ."
"Don't be daft. They don't know what a proper job is."
The jug glugged, but with a deeper tone, suggesting that it contained a lot of emptiness.
"Bet they've never been up to the armpit-"
"The point is. The point is. The point. The point is. Hah. All laughin' at decent rude artisans, eh? I mean. I mean. I mean. What's it all about? I mean. I mean. I mean. Play's all about some mechanical. . . rude buggers makin' a pig's ear out of doin' a play about a bunch of lords and ladies-"
A chill in the air, sharp as icicles . . .
"It needs something else."
"Right. Right."
"A mythic element."
"Right. My point. My point. My point. Needs a plot they can go home whistlin'. Exactly."
"So it should be done here, in the open air. Open to the sky and the hills."
Jason Ogg wrinkled his brows. They were always pretty wrinkled anyway, whenever he was dealing with the complexities of the world. Only when it came to iron did he know exactly what to do. But he held up a wavering finger and tried to count his fellow thespians. Given that the jug was now empty, this was an effort. There seemed, on average, to be seven other people. But he had a vague, nagging feeling that something wasn't right.
"Out here," he said, uncertainly.
"Good idea," said Weaver.
"Wasn't it your idea?" said Jason.
"I thought you said it."
"I thought you did."
"Who cares who said it?" said Thatcher. "'S'a good idea. Seems . . . right."
"What was that about the miffic quality?"
"What's miffic?"
"Something you've got to have," said Weaver, theatrical expert. "Very important, your miffics."
"Me mam said no one was to go-" Jason began.
"We shan't be doing any dancing or anything," said Carter. "I can see you don't want people skulking around up here by 'emselves, doin' magic. But it can't be wrong if everyone comes here. I mean, the king and everyone. Your mam, too. Hah, I'd like to see any girls with no drawers on get past her!"
"I don't think it's just-" Jason began.
"And the other one'll be there, too," said Weaver.
They considered Granny Weatherwax.
"Cor, she frightens the life out of me, her," said Thatcher, eventually. "The way she looks right through you. I wouldn't say a word against her, mark you, a fine figure of a woman," he said loudly, and then added rather more quietly, "but they do say she creeps around the place o'nights, as a hare or a bat or something. Changes her shape and all. Not that I believes a word of it," he raised his voice, then let it sink again, "but old Weezen over in Slice told me once he shot a hare in the leg one night and next day she passed him on the lane and said 'Ouch' and gave him a right ding across the back of his head."
"My dad said," said Weaver, "that one day he was leading our old cow to market and it took ill and fell down in the lane near her cottage and he couldn't get it to move and he went up to her place and he knocked on the door and she opened it and before he could open his mouth she said, "Yer cow's ill, Weaver" . . . just like that . . . And then she said-"
"Was that the old brindled cow what your dad had?" said Carter.
"No, it were my uncle had the brindled cow, we had the one with the crumpled horn," said Weaver. "Anyway-"
"Could have sworn it was brindled," said Carter. "I remember my dad looking at it over the hedge one day and saying, 'That's fine brindling on that cow, you don't get brindling like that these days.' That was when you had that old field alongside Cabb's Well."
"We never had that field, it was my cousin had that field," said Weaver. "Anyway-"
"You sure?"
"Anyway," said Weaver, she said, "You wait there, I'll give you something for it," and she goes out into her back kitchen and comes back with a couple of big red pills, and she-"
"How'd it get crumpled, then?" said Carter.
"-and she gave him one of the pills and said, 'What you do, you raise the old cow's tail and shove this pill where the sun don't shine, and in half a minute she'll be up and running as fast as she can,' and he thanked her, and then as he was going out of the door he said, 'What's the other pill for?' and she gave him a look and said, 'Well, you want to catch her, don't you?'"
"That'd be that deep valley up near Slice," said Carter.
They looked at him.
"What, exactly, are you talking about?" said Weaver.
"It's right behind the mountain," said Carter, nodding knowingly. "Very shady there. That's what she meant, I expect. The place where the sun doesn't shine. Long way to go for a pill, but I suppose that's witches for you."
Weaver winked at the others.
"Listen," he said, "I'm telling you she meant . . . well, where the monkey put his nut."
Carter shook his head.
"No monkeys in Slice," he said. His face became suffused with a slow grin. "Oh, I get it! She was daft!"
"Them playwriters down in Ankh," said Baker, "boy, they certainly know about us. Pass me the jug."
Jason turned his head again. He was getting more and more uneasy. His hands, which were always in daily contact with iron, were itching.
"Reckon we ought to be getting along home now, lads," he managed.
"'S'nice night," said Baker, staying put. "Look at them stars a-twinklin'."
"Turned a bit cold, though," said Jason.
"Smells like snow," said Carter.
"Oh, yeah," said Baker. "That's right. Snow at midsummer. That's what they get where the sun don't shine."
"Shutup, shutup, shutup," said Jason.
"What's up with you?"
"It's wrong! We shouldn't be up here! Can't you feel it?"
"Oh, sit down, man," said Weaver. "It's fine. Can't feel nothing but the air. And there's still more scumble in the jug."
Baker leaned back.
"I remember an old story about this place," he said. "Some man went to sleep up here once, when he was out hunting."
The bottle glugged in the dusk.
"So what? I can do that," said Carter. "I go to sleep every night, reg'lar."
"Ah, but this man, when he woke up and went home, his wife was carrying on with someone else and all his children had grown up and didn't know who he was."
"Happens to me just about every day," said Weaver gloomily.
Baker sniffed.
"You know, it does smell a bit like snow. You know? That kind of sharp smell."
Thatcher leaned back, cradling his head on his arm.
"Tell you what," he said, "if I thought my old woman'd marry someone else and my hulking great kids'd bugger off and stop eating up the larder every day I'd come up here with a blanket like a shot. Who's got that jug?"
Jason took a pull out of nervousness, and found that he felt better as the alcohol dissolved his synapses.
But he made an effort.
"Hey, lads," he slurred, "'ve got 'nother jug coolin' in the water trough down in the forge, what d'you say? We could all go down there now. Lads? Lads?"
There was the soft sound of snoring.
"Oh, lads."
Jason stood up.
The stars wheeled.
Jason fell down, very gently. The jug rolled out of his hands and bounced across the grass.
The stars twinkled, the breeze was cold, and it smelled of snow.
The king dined alone, which is to say, he dined at one end of the big table and Magrat dined at the other. But they managed to meet up for a last glass of wine in front of the fire.
They always found it difficult to know what to say at moments like this. Neither of them was used to spending what might be called quality time in the company of another person. The conversation tended toward the cryptic.
And mostly it was about the wedding. It's different, for royalty. For one thing, you've already got everything. The traditional wedding list with the complete set of Tupperware and the twelve-piece dining set looks a bit out of place when you've already got a castle with so many furnished rooms that have been closed up for so long that the spiders have evolved into distinct species in accordance with strict evolutionary principles. And you can't simply multiply it all up and ask for An Army in a Red and White Motif to match the kitchen wallpaper. Royalty, when they marry, either get very small things, like exquisitely constructed clockwork eggs, or large bulky items, like duchesses.
And then there's the guest list. It's bad enough at an ordinary wedding, what with old relatives who dribble and swear, brothers who get belligerent after one drink, and various people who Aren't Talking to other people because of What They Said About Our Sharon. Royalty has to deal with entire countries who get belligerent after one drink, and entire kingdoms who Have Broken Off Diplomatic Relations after what the Crown Prince Said About Our Sharon. Verence had managed to work that all out, but then there were the species to consider. Trolls and dwarfs got on all right in Lancre by the simple expedient of having nothing to do with one another, but too many of them under one roof, especially if drink was flowing, and especially if it was flowing in the direction of the dwarfs, and people would Be Breaking People's Arms Off because of what, more or less, Their Ancestors Said About Our Sharon.
And then there's other things . . .
"How's the girl they brought in?"
"I've told Millie to keep an eye on her. What are they doing, those two?"
"I don't know."
You're king, aren't you?"
Verence shifted uneasily.
"But they're witches. I don't like to ask them questions."
"Why not?"
"They might give me answers. And then what would I do?"
"What did Granny want to talk to you about?"
"Oh . . . you know . . . things . . ."
"It wasn't about . . . sex, was it?"
Verence suddenly looked like a man who had been expecting a frontal attack and suddenly finds nasty things happening behind him.
"No! Why?"
"Nanny was trying to give me motherly advice. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. Honestly, they both treat me as if I'm a big child."
"Oh, no. Nothing like that."
They sat on either side of the huge fireplace, both crimson with embarrassment.
Then Magrat said: "Er . . . you did send off for that book, did you? You know . . . the one with the woodcuts?"
"Oh, yes. Yes, I did."
"It ought to have arrived by now."
"Well, we only get a mail coach once a week. I expect it'll come tomorrow. I'm fed up with running down there every week in case Shawn gets there first."
"You are king. You could tell him not to."
"Don't like to, really. He's so keen."
A large log crackled into two across the iron dogs.
"Can you really get books about. . . that?"
"You can get books about anything."
They both stared at the fire. Verence thought: she doesn't like being a queen, I can see that, but that's what you are when you marry a king, all the books say so . . .
And Magrat thought: he was much nicer when he was a man with silver bells on his hat and slept every night on the floor in front of his master's door. I could talk to him then . . .
Verence clapped his hands together.
"Well, that's about it, then. Busy day tomorrow, what with all the guests coming and everything."
"Yes. It's going to be a long day."
"Very nearly the longest day. Haha."
"Yes."
"I expect they've put warming pans in our beds."
"Has Shawn got the hang of it now?"
"I hope so. I can't afford any more mattresses."
It was a great hall. Shadows piled up in the corners, clustered at either end.
"I suppose," said Magrat, very slowly, as they stared at the fire, "they haven't really had many books here in Lancre. Up until now."
"Literacy is a great thing."
"They got along without them, I suppose."
"Yes, but not properly. Their husbandry is really very primitive."
Magrat looked at the fire. Their wifery wasn't up to much either, she thought.
"So we'd better be off to bed, then, do you think?"
"I suppose so."
Verence took down two silver candlesticks, and lit the candles with a taper. He handed one to Magrat.
"Goodnight, then."
"Goodnight."
They kissed, and turned away, and headed for their own rooms.
The sheets on Magrat's bed were just beginning to turn brown. She pulled out the warming pan and dropped it out of the window.
She glared at the garderobe.
Magrat was probably the only person in Lancre who worried about things being biodegradable. Everyone else just hoped things would last and knew that damn near everything went rotten if you left it long enough.
At home — correction, at the cottage where she used to live — there had been a privy at the bottom of the garden.
She'd approved of it. With a regular bucket of ashes and a copy of last year's Almanack on a nail and a bunch-of-grapes cut out on the door it functioned quite effectively. About once every few months she'd have to dig a big hole and get someone to help her move the shed itself.
The garderobe was this: a sort of small roofed-in room inside the wall, with a wooden seat positioned over a large square hole that went down all the way to the foot of the castle wall far below, where there was an opening from which biodegradability took place once a week by means of an organodynamic process known as Shawn Ogg and his wheelbarrow. That much Magrat understood. It kind of fitted in with the whole idea of royalty and commonality. What shocked her were the hooks.
They were for storing clothes in the garderobe. Millie had explained that the more expensive furs and things were hung there. Moths were kept away by the draught from the hole and . . . the smell[23].
Magrat had put her foot down about that, at least.
Now she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.
Of course she wanted to marry Verence, even with his weak chin and slightly runny eyes. In the pit of the night Magrat knew that she was in no position to be choosy, and getting a king in the circumstances was a stroke of luck.
It was just that she had preferred him when he'd been a Fool. There's something about a man who tinkles gently as he moves.
It was just that she could see a future of bad tapestry and sitting looking wistfully out of the window.
It was just that she was fed up with books of etiquette and lineage and Twurp's Peerage of the Fifteen Mountains and the Sto Plains.
You had to know this kind of thing, to be a queen. There were books full of the stuff in the Long Gallery, and she hadn't even explored the far end. How to address the third cousin of an earl. What the pictures on shields meant, all those lions passant and regardant. And the clothes weren't getting any better. Magrat had drawn the line at a wimple, and she wasn't at all happy about the big pointy hat with the scarf dangling from it. It probably looked beautiful on the Lady of Shallot, but on Magrat it looked as though someone had dropped a big ice cream on her neck.
Nanny Ogg sat in front of her fire in her dressing gown, smoking her pipe and idly cutting her toenails. There was the occasional ping and ricochet from distant parts of the room, and a small tinkle as an oil lamp was smashed.
Granny Weatherwax lay on her bed, still and cold. In her blue-veined hands, the words: I AM NOT DEAD . . .
Her mind drifted across the forest, searching, searching. . .
The trouble was, she could not go where there were no eyes to see or ears to hear.
So she never noticed the hollow near the stones, where eight men slept.
And dreamed . . .
Lancre is cut off from the rest of the lands of mankind by a bridge over Lancre Gorge, above the shallow but poisonously fast and treacherous Lancre River[24].
The coach pulled up at the far end.
There was a badly painted red, black, and white post across the road.
The coachman sounded his horn.
"What's up?" said Ridcully, leaning out of the window.
"Troll bridge."
"Whoops."
After a while there was a booming sound under the bridge, and a troll clambered over the parapet. It was quite overdressed, for a troll. In addition to the statutory loincloth, it was wearing a helmet. Admittedly it had been designed for a human head, and was attached to the much larger troll head by string, but there probably wasn't a better word than "wearing."
"What's up?" said the Bursar, waking up.
"There's a troll on the bridge," said Ridcully, "but it's underneath a helmet, so it's probably official and will get into serious trouble if it eats people[25]. Nothing to worry about."
The Bursar giggled, because he was on the upcurve of whatever switchback his mind was currently riding.
The troll appeared at the coach window.
"Afternoon, your lordships," it said. "Customs inspection."
"I don't think we have any," babbled the Bursar happily. "I mean, we used to have a tradition of rolling boiled eggs downhill on Soul Cake Tuesday, but-"
"I means," said the troll, "do you have any beer, spirits, wines, liquors, hallucinogenic herbage, or books of a lewd or licentious nature?"
Ridcully pulled the Bursar back from the window.
"No," he said.
"No?"
"No."
"Sure?"
"Yes."
"Would you like some?"
"We haven't even got," said the Bursar, despite Ridcully's efforts to sit on his head, "any billygoats."
"I thought . . . elves were just stories . . . like the Tooth Fairy. . ."
"Nothing funny about the Tooth Fairy," said Granny. "Very hard-working woman. I'll never know how she manages with the ladder and everything. No. Elves are real. Oh, drat. Listen. . ."
She turned, and held up a finger.
"Feudal system, right?"
"What?"
"Feudal system! Pay attention. Feudal system. King on top, then barons and whatnot, then everyone else . . . witches off to one side a bit," Granny added diplomatically. She steepled her fingers. "Feudal system. Like them pointy buildings heathen kings get buried in. Understand?"
"Yes."
"Right. That's how the elves see things, yes? When they get into a world, everyone else is on the bottom. Slaves. Worse than slaves. Worse than animals, even. They take what they want, and they want everything. But worst of all, the worst bit is . . . they read your mind. They hear what you think, and in self-defence you think what they want. Glamour. And it's barred windows at night, and food out for the fairies, and turning around three times before you talks about 'em, and horseshoes over the door."
"I thought that sort of thing was, you know," the king grinned sickly, "folklore?"
"Of course it's folklore, you stupid man!"
"I do happen to be king, you know," said Verence reproachfully.
"You stupid king, your majesty,"
"Thank you."
"I mean it doesn't mean it's not true! Maybe it gets a little muddled over the years, folks forget details, they forget why they do things. Like the horseshoe thing."
"I know my granny had one over the door," said the king.
"There you are. Nothing to do with its shape. But if you lives in an old cottage and you're poor, it's probably the nearest bit of iron with holes in it that you can find."
"Ah."
"The thing about elves is they've got no . . . begins with m," Granny snapped her fingers irritably.
"Manners?"
"Hah! Right, but no."
"Muscle? Mucus? Mystery?"
"No. No. No. Means like . . . seein' the other person's point of view."
Verence tried to see the world from a Granny Weatherwax perspective, and suspicion dawned.
"Empathy?"
"Right. None at all. Even a hunter, a good hunter, can feel for the quarry. That's what makes 'em a good hunter. Elves aren't like that. They're cruel for fun, and they can't understand things like mercy. They can't understand that anything apart from themselves might have feelings. They laugh a lot, especially if they've caught a lonely human or a dwarf or a troll. Trolls might be made out of rock, your majesty, but I'm telling you that a troll is your brother compared to elves. In the head, I mean."
"But why don't I know all this?"
"Glamour. Elves are beautiful. They've got," she spat the word, "style. Beauty. Grace. That's what matters. If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember. They remember the glamour. All the rest of it, all the truth of it, becomes . . . old wives' tales."
"Magrat's never said anything about them."
Granny hesitated.
"Magrat doesn't know too much about elves," she said. "Hah. She ain't even a young wife yet. They're not something that gets talked about a lot these days. It's not good to talk about them. It's better if everyone forgets about them. They . . . come when they're called. Not called like 'Cooee.' Called inside people's heads. It's enough for people just to want them to be here."
Verence waved his hands in the air.
"I'm still learning about monarchy," he said. "I don't understand this stuff."
"You don't have to understand. You're a king. Listen. You know about weak places in the world? Where it joins other worlds?"
"No."
"There's one up on the moor. That's why the Dancers were put up around it. They're a kind of wall."
"But sometimes the barriers between worlds is weaker, see? Like tides. At circle time."
"Ah."
"And if people act stupidly then, even the Dancers can't keep the gateway shut. 'Cos where the world's thin, even the wrong thought can make the link."
"Ah."
Verence felt the conversation had orbited back to that area where he could make a contribution.
"Stupidly?" he said.
"Calling them. Attracting them."
"Ah. So what do I do?"
"Just go on reigning. I think we're safe. They can't get through. I've stopped the girls, so there'll be no more channeling. You keep this one firmly under lock and key, and don't tell Magrat. No sense in worrying her, is there? Something came through, but I'm keeping an eye on it."
Granny rubbed her hands together in grim satisfaction.
"I think I've got it sorted," she said.
She blinked.
She pinched the bridge of her nose.
"What did I just say?" she said.
"Uh. You said you thought you'd got it sorted," said the king.
Granny Weatherwax blinked.
"That's right," she said. "I said that. Yes. And I'm in the castle, aren't I? Yes."
"Are you all right. Mistress Weatherwax?" said the king, his voice taut with sudden worry.
"Fine, fine. Fine. In the castle. And the children are all right, too?"
"Sorry?"
She blinked again.
"What?"
"You don't look well. . ."
Granny screwed up her face and shook her head. "Yes. The castle. I'm me, you're you, Gytha's upstairs with Magrat. That's right." She focused on the king. "Just a bit of . . . of overtiredness there. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about at all."
Nanny Ogg looked doubtfully at Magrat's preparation.
"A mouldy bread poultice doesn't sound very magical to me," she said.
"Goodie Whemper used to swear by it. But I don't know what we can do about the coma."
Magrat thumbed hopefully through the crackling, ancient pages. Her ancestral witches had written things down pretty much as they occurred to them, so that quite important spells and observations would be interspersed with comments about the state of their feet.
"It says here 'The smalle pointy stones sometimes found are knowne as Elf-shot, beinge the heads of Elf arrows from Times Past.' " That's all I can find. And there's a drawing. But I've seen these little stones around, too."
"Oh, there's lots of them," said Nanny, bandaging Diamanda's shoulder. "Dig 'em up all the time, in my garden."
"But elves don't shoot people! Elves are good."
"They probably just fired at Esme and the girl in fun, like?"
"But-"
"Look, dear, you're going to be queen. It's an important job. You look after the king now, and let me and Esme look after . . . other stuff."
"Being Queen? It's all tapestry and walking around in unsuitable dresses! I know Granny. She doesn't like anything that's . . . that's got style and grace. She's so sour."
"I daresay she's got her reasons," said Nanny amiably. "Well, that's got the girl patched up. What shall we do with her now?"
"We've got dozens of spare bedrooms," said Magrat, "and they're all ready for the guests. We can put her in one of them. Um. Nanny?"
"Yes?"
"Would you like to be a bridesmaid?"
"Not really, dear. Bit old for that sort of thing." Nanny hovered. "There isn't anything you need to ask me, though, is there?"
"What do you mean?"
"What with your mum being dead and you having no female relatives and everything. . ."
Magrat still looked puzzled.
"After the wedding, is what I'm hinting about," said Nanny.
"Oh, that. No, most of that's being done by a caterer. The cook here isn't much good at canapes and things."
Nanny looked carefully at the ceiling.
"And what about after that?" she said. "If you catch my meaning."
"I'm getting a lot of girls in to do the clearing up. Look, don't worry. I've thought of everything. I wish you and Granny wouldn't treat me as if I don't know anything."
Nanny coughed. "Your man," she said. "Been around a bit, I expect? Been walking out with dozens of young women, I've no doubt."
"Why do you say that? I don't think he has. Fools don't have much of a private life and, of course, he's been very busy since he's been king. He's a bit shy with girls."
Nanny gave up.
"Oh, well," she said, "I'm sure you'll work it all out as you-"
Granny and the king reappeared.
"How's the girl?" said Granny.
"We took out the arrow and cleaned up the wound, anyway," said Magrat. "But she won't wake up. Best if she stays here."
"You sure?" said Granny. "She needs keeping an eye on. I've got a spare bedroom."
"She shouldn't be moved," said Magrat, briskly.
"They've put their mark on her," said Granny. "You sure you know how to deal with it?"
"I do know it's quite a nasty wound," said Magrat, briskly.
"I ain't exactly thinking about the wound," said Granny. "She's been touched by them is what I mean. She's-"
"I'm sure I know how to deal with a sick person," said Magrat. "I'm not totally stupid, you know."
"She's not to be left alone," Granny persisted.
"There'll be plenty of people around," said Verence. "The guests start arriving tomorrow."
"Being alone isn't the same as not having other people around," said Granny.
"This is a castle. Granny."
"Right. Well. We won't keep you, then," said Granny. "Come, Gytha."
Nanny Ogg helped herself to an elderly lamb chop from under one of the silver covers, and waved it vaguely at the royal pair.
"Have fun," she said. "Insofar as that's possible."
"Gytha!"
"Coming."
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.
"Well, that's it," said Nanny Ogg, as the witches walked out over the castle's drawbridge. "Well done, Esme."
"It ain't over," said Granny Weatherwax.
"You said yourself they can't get through now. No one else round here's going to try any magic at the stones, that's sure enough."
"Yes, but it'll be circle time for another day or so yet. Anything could happen."
"That Diamanda girl's out of it, and you've put the wind up the others," said Nanny Ogg, tossing the lamb bone into the dry moat. "Ain't no one else going to call 'em, I know that."
"There's still the one in the dungeon."
"You want to get rid of it?" said Nanny. "I'll send our Shawn to King Ironfoundersson up at Copperhead, if you like. Or I could hop on the old broomstick meself and go and drop the word to the Mountain King. The dwarfs and trolls'll take it off our hands like a shot. No more problem."
Granny ignored this.
"There's something else," she said. "Something we haven't thought of. She'll still be looking for a way."
They'd reached the town square now. She surveyed it. Of course, Verence was king and that was right and proper, and this was his kingdom and that was right and proper too. But in a deeper sense the kingdom belonged to her. And to Gytha Ogg, of course. Verence's writ only ran to the doings of mankind; even the dwarfs and trolls didn't acknowledge him as king, although they were very polite about it. But when it came to the trees and the rocks and the soil. Granny Weatherwax saw it as hers. She was sensitive to its moods.
It was still being watched. She could sense the watchfulness. Sufficiently close examination changes the thing being observed, and what was being observed was the whole country. The whole country was under attack, and here she was, her mind unravelling . . .
"Funny thing," said Nanny Ogg, to no one in particular, "while I was sitting up there at the Dancers this morning I thought, funny thing. . ."
"What're you going on about now?"
"I remember when I was young there was a girl like Diamanda. Bad-tempered and impatient and talented and a real pain in the bum to the old witches. I don't know if you happen to remember her, by any chance?"
They passed Jason's forge, which rang to the sound of his hammer.
"I never forgot her," said Granny, quietly.
"Funny thing, how things go round in circles . . ."
"No they don't," said Granny Weatherwax firmly. "I wasn't like her. You know what the old witches round here were like. Set in their ways. No more than a bunch of old wart-charmers. And I wasn't rude to them. I was just . . . firm. Forthright. I stood up for meself. Part of being a witch is standing up for yourself — you're grinning."
"Just wind, I promise."
"It's completely different with her. No one's ever been able to say I wasn't open to new ideas."
"Well known for being open to new ideas, you are," said Nanny Ogg. "I'm always saying, that Esme Weatherwax, she's always open to new ideas."
"Right." Granny Weatherwax looked up at the forested hills around the town, and frowned.
"The thing is," she said, "girls these days don't know how to think with a clear mind. You've got to think clearly and not be distracted. That's Magrat for you, always being distracted. It gets in the way of doing the proper thing." She stopped. "I can feel her, Gytha. The Queen of the Fairies. She can get her mind past the stones. Blast that girl! She's got a way in. She's everywhere. Everywhere I look with my mind, I can smell her."
"Everything's going to be all right," said Nanny, patting her on the shoulder. "You'll see."
"She's looking for a way," Granny repeated.
"Good morrow, brothers, and wherehap do we whist this merry day?" said Carter the baker.
The rest of the Lancre Morris Men looked at him.
"You on some kind of medication or what?" said Weaver the thatcher.
"Just trying to enter into the spirit of the thing," said Carter.
"That's how rude mechanicals talk."
"Who're rude mechanicals?" said Baker the weaver.
"They're the same as Comic Artisans, I think," said Carter the baker.
"I asked my mum what artisans are," said Jason.
"Yeah?"
"They're us."
"And we're Rude Mechanicals as well?" said Baker the weaver.
"I reckon."
"Bum!"
"Well, we certainly don't talk like these buggers in the writing," said Carter the baker. "I never said 'fol-de-rol' in my life. And I can't understand any of the jokes."
"You ain't supposed to understand the jokes, this is a play," said Jason.
"Drawers!" said Baker the weaver.
"Oh, shut up. And push the cart."
"Don't see why we couldn't do the Stick and Bucket Dance . . ." mumbled Tailor the other weaver.
"We're not doing the Stick and Bucket dance! I never want to hear any more ever about the Stick and Bucket dance! I still get twinges in my knee! So shut up about the Stick and Bucket dance!"
"Belly!" shouted Baker, who wasn't a man to let go of an idea.
The cart containing the props bumped and skidded on the rutted track.
Jason had to admit that Morris dancing was a lot easier than acting. People didn't keep turning up to watch and giggle. Small children didn't stand around jeering. Weaver and Thatcher were in almost open rebellion now, and mucking up the words. The evenings were becoming a constant search for somewhere to rehearse.
Even the forest wasn't private enough. It was amazing how people would just happen to be passing.
Weaver stopped pushing, and wiped his brow.
"You'd have thought the Blasted Oak would've been safe," he said. "Half a mile from the nearest path, and damn me if after five minutes you can't move for charcoal burners, hermits, trappers, tree tappers, hunters, trolls, bird-limers, hurdle-makers, swine-herds, truffle hunters, dwarfs, bodgers and suspicious buggers with big coats on. I'm surprised there's room in the forest for the bloody trees. Where to now?"
They'd reached a crossroads, if such it could be called.
"Don't remember this one," said Carpenter the poacher. "Thought I knew all the paths around here."
"That's 'cos you only ever sees 'em in the dark," said Jason.
"Yeah, everyone knows 'tis your delight on a shining night," said Thatcher the carter.
"Tis his delight every night," said Jason.
"Hey," said Baker the weaver, "we're getting really good at this rude mechanism, ain't we?"
"Let's go right," said Jason.
"Nah, it's all briars and thorns that way."
"All right, then, left then."
"It's all winding," said Weaver.
"What about the middle road?" said Carter.
Jason peered ahead.
There was a middle track, hardly more than an animal path, which wound away under shady trees. Ferns grew thickly alongside it. There was a general green, rich, dark feel to it, suggested by the word "bosky[22]"
His blacksmith's senses stood up and screamed.
"Not that way," he said.
"Ah, come on," said Weaver. "What's wrong with it?"
"Goes up to the Dancers, that path does," said Jason. "Me mam said no one was to go up to the Dancers 'cos of them young women dancing round 'em in the nudd."
"Yeah, but they've been stopped from that," said Thatcher. "Old Granny Weatherwax put her foot down hard and made 'em put their drawers on."
"And they ain't to go there anymore, neither," said Carter. "So it'll be nice and quiet for the rehearsing."
"Me mam said no one was to go there," said Jason, a shade uncertainly.
"Yeah, but she probably meant . . . you know . . . with magical intent," said Carter. "Nothing magical about prancing around in wigs and stuff."
"Right," said Thatcher. "And it'll be really private."
"And," said Weaver, "if any young women fancies sneaking back up there to dance around without their drawers on, we'll be sure to see 'em."
There was a moment of absolute, introspective silence.
"I reckon," said Thatcher, voicing the unspoken views of nearly all of them, "we owes it to the community."
"We-ell," said Jason, "me mam said . . ."
"Anyway, your mum's a fine one to talk," said Weaver. "My dad said that when he was young, your mum hardly ever had-"
"Oh, all right," said Jason, clearly outnumbered. "Can't see it can do any harm. We're only actin'. It's . . . it's make-believe. It's not as if it's anything real. But no one's to do any dancing. Especially, and I want everyone to be absolutely definite about this, the Stick and Bucket dance."
"Oh, we'll be acting all right," said Weaver. "And keeping watch as well, o'course."
"It's our duty to the community," said Thatcher, again.
"Make-believe is bound to be all right," said Jason, uncertainly.
Clang boinng clang ding . . .
The sound echoed around Lancre.
Grown men, digging in their gardens, flung down their spades and hurried for the safety of their cottages . . .
Clang boinnng goinng ding . . .
Women appeared in doorways and yelled desperately for their children to come in at once . . .
. . . BANG buggrit Dong boinng . . .
Shutters thundered shut. Some men, watched by their frightened families, poured water on the fire and tried to stuff sacks up the chimney . . .
Nanny Ogg lived alone, because she said old people needed their pride and independence. Besides, Jason lived on one side, and he or his wife whatshername could easily be roused by means of a boot applied heavily to the wall, and Shawn lived on the other side and Nanny had got him to fix up a long length of string with some tin cans on it in case his presence was required. But this was only for emergencies, such as when she wanted a cup of tea or felt bored.
Bond drat clang . . .
Nanny Ogg had no bathroom but she did have a tin bath, which normally hung on a nail on the back of the privy. Now she was dragging it indoors. It was almost up the garden, after being bounced off various trees, walls, and garden gnomes on the way.
Three large black kettles steamed by her fireside. Beside them were half a dozen towels, the loofah, the pumice stone, the soap, the soap for when the first soap got lost, the ladle for fishing spiders out, the waterlogged rubber duck with the prolapsed squeaker, the bunion chisel, the big scrubbing brush, the small scrubbing brush, the scrubbing brush on a stick for difficult crevices, the banjo, the thing with the pipes and spigots that no one ever really knew the purpose of, and a bottle of Klatchian Nights bath essence, one drop of which could crinkle paint.
Bong clang slam . . .
Everyone in Lancre had learned to recognize Nanny's pre-ablutive activities, out of self-defense.
"But it ain't April!" neighbours told themselves, as they drew the curtains.
In the house just up the hill from Nanny Ogg's cottage Mrs. Skindle grabbed her husband's arm.
"The goat's still outside!"
"Are you mad? I ain't going out there! Not now!"
"You know what happened last time! It was paralysed all down one side for three days, man, and we couldn't get it down off the roof!"
Mr. Skindle poked his head out of the door. It had all gone quiet. Too quiet.
"She's probably pouring the water in," he said.
"You've got a minute or two," said his wife. "Go on, or we'll be drinking yoghurt for weeks."
Mr. Skindle took down a halter from behind the door, and crept out to where his goat was tethered near the hedge. It too had learned to recognize the bathtime ritual, and was rigid with apprehension.
There was no point in trying to drag it. Eventually he picked it up bodily.
There was a distant but insistent sloshing noise, and the bonging sound of a floating pumice stone bouncing on the side of a tin bath.
Mr. Skindle started to run.
Then there was the distant tinkle of a banjo being tuned.
The world held its breath.
Then it came, like a tornado sweeping across a prairie.
"AAaaaaeeeeeee-"
Three flowerpots outside the door cracked, one after the other. Shrapnel whizzed past Mr. Skindle's ear.
"-wizzaaardsah staaafff has a knobontheend, knobontheend-"
He threw the goat through the doorway and leapt after it. His wife was waiting, and slammed the door shut behind him.
The whole family, including the goat, got under the table.
It wasn't that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.
There had been plenty of singers whose high notes could smash a glass, but Nanny's high C could clean it.
The Lancre Morris Men sat glumly on the turf, passing an earthenware jug between them. It had not been a good rehearsal.
"Don't work, does it?" said Thatcher. "'S'not funny, that I do know," said Weaver. "Can't see the king killing himself laughing at us playing a bunch of mechanical artisans not being very good at doin' a play."
"You're just no good at it," said Jason. "We're sposed to be no good at it," said Weaver. "Yeah, but you're no good at acting like someone who's ho good at acting," said Tinker. "I don't know how, but you ain't. You can't expect all the fine lords and ladies-"
A breeze blew over the moor, tasting of ice at midsummer.
"-to laugh at us not being any good at being no good at acting."
"I don't see what's funny about a bunch of rude artisans trying to do a play anyway," said Weaver.
Jason shrugged.
"It says all the gentry-"
A tang on the wind, the sharp tin taste of snow . . .
"-in Ankh-Morpork laughed at it for weeks and weeks," he said. "It was on Broad Way for three months."
"What's Broad Way?"
"That's where all the theatres are. The Dysk, Lord Wynkin's Men, the Bearpit . . ."
"They'd laugh at any damn thing down there," said Weaver. "Anyway, they all think we're all simpletons up here. They all think we say oo-aah and sings daft folk songs and has three brain cells huddlin' together for warmth 'cos of drinking scumble all the time."
"Yeah. Pass that jug."
"Swish city bastards."
"They don't know what it's like to be up to the armpit in a cow's backside on a snowy night. Hah!"
"And there ain't one of 'em that — what're you talking about? You ain't got a cow."
"No, but I know what it's like."
"They don't know what it's like to get one wellie sucked off in a farmyard full of gyppoe and that horrible moment where you waves the foot around knowin' that wherever you puts it down it's going to go through the crust."
The stoneware jug glugged gently as it was passed from hand to unsteady hand.
"True. That's very true. And you ever seen 'em Morris dancing? "Muff to make you hang up your hanky."
"What, Morris dancing in a city?"
"Well, down in Sto Helit, anyway. Bunch o' soft wizards and merchants. I watched 'em a whole hour and there wasn't even a groinin'."
"Swish city bastards. Comin' up here, takin' our jobs. . ."
"Don't be daft. They don't know what a proper job is."
The jug glugged, but with a deeper tone, suggesting that it contained a lot of emptiness.
"Bet they've never been up to the armpit-"
"The point is. The point is. The point. The point is. Hah. All laughin' at decent rude artisans, eh? I mean. I mean. I mean. What's it all about? I mean. I mean. I mean. Play's all about some mechanical. . . rude buggers makin' a pig's ear out of doin' a play about a bunch of lords and ladies-"
A chill in the air, sharp as icicles . . .
"It needs something else."
"Right. Right."
"A mythic element."
"Right. My point. My point. My point. Needs a plot they can go home whistlin'. Exactly."
"So it should be done here, in the open air. Open to the sky and the hills."
Jason Ogg wrinkled his brows. They were always pretty wrinkled anyway, whenever he was dealing with the complexities of the world. Only when it came to iron did he know exactly what to do. But he held up a wavering finger and tried to count his fellow thespians. Given that the jug was now empty, this was an effort. There seemed, on average, to be seven other people. But he had a vague, nagging feeling that something wasn't right.
"Out here," he said, uncertainly.
"Good idea," said Weaver.
"Wasn't it your idea?" said Jason.
"I thought you said it."
"I thought you did."
"Who cares who said it?" said Thatcher. "'S'a good idea. Seems . . . right."
"What was that about the miffic quality?"
"What's miffic?"
"Something you've got to have," said Weaver, theatrical expert. "Very important, your miffics."
"Me mam said no one was to go-" Jason began.
"We shan't be doing any dancing or anything," said Carter. "I can see you don't want people skulking around up here by 'emselves, doin' magic. But it can't be wrong if everyone comes here. I mean, the king and everyone. Your mam, too. Hah, I'd like to see any girls with no drawers on get past her!"
"I don't think it's just-" Jason began.
"And the other one'll be there, too," said Weaver.
They considered Granny Weatherwax.
"Cor, she frightens the life out of me, her," said Thatcher, eventually. "The way she looks right through you. I wouldn't say a word against her, mark you, a fine figure of a woman," he said loudly, and then added rather more quietly, "but they do say she creeps around the place o'nights, as a hare or a bat or something. Changes her shape and all. Not that I believes a word of it," he raised his voice, then let it sink again, "but old Weezen over in Slice told me once he shot a hare in the leg one night and next day she passed him on the lane and said 'Ouch' and gave him a right ding across the back of his head."
"My dad said," said Weaver, "that one day he was leading our old cow to market and it took ill and fell down in the lane near her cottage and he couldn't get it to move and he went up to her place and he knocked on the door and she opened it and before he could open his mouth she said, "Yer cow's ill, Weaver" . . . just like that . . . And then she said-"
"Was that the old brindled cow what your dad had?" said Carter.
"No, it were my uncle had the brindled cow, we had the one with the crumpled horn," said Weaver. "Anyway-"
"Could have sworn it was brindled," said Carter. "I remember my dad looking at it over the hedge one day and saying, 'That's fine brindling on that cow, you don't get brindling like that these days.' That was when you had that old field alongside Cabb's Well."
"We never had that field, it was my cousin had that field," said Weaver. "Anyway-"
"You sure?"
"Anyway," said Weaver, she said, "You wait there, I'll give you something for it," and she goes out into her back kitchen and comes back with a couple of big red pills, and she-"
"How'd it get crumpled, then?" said Carter.
"-and she gave him one of the pills and said, 'What you do, you raise the old cow's tail and shove this pill where the sun don't shine, and in half a minute she'll be up and running as fast as she can,' and he thanked her, and then as he was going out of the door he said, 'What's the other pill for?' and she gave him a look and said, 'Well, you want to catch her, don't you?'"
"That'd be that deep valley up near Slice," said Carter.
They looked at him.
"What, exactly, are you talking about?" said Weaver.
"It's right behind the mountain," said Carter, nodding knowingly. "Very shady there. That's what she meant, I expect. The place where the sun doesn't shine. Long way to go for a pill, but I suppose that's witches for you."
Weaver winked at the others.
"Listen," he said, "I'm telling you she meant . . . well, where the monkey put his nut."
Carter shook his head.
"No monkeys in Slice," he said. His face became suffused with a slow grin. "Oh, I get it! She was daft!"
"Them playwriters down in Ankh," said Baker, "boy, they certainly know about us. Pass me the jug."
Jason turned his head again. He was getting more and more uneasy. His hands, which were always in daily contact with iron, were itching.
"Reckon we ought to be getting along home now, lads," he managed.
"'S'nice night," said Baker, staying put. "Look at them stars a-twinklin'."
"Turned a bit cold, though," said Jason.
"Smells like snow," said Carter.
"Oh, yeah," said Baker. "That's right. Snow at midsummer. That's what they get where the sun don't shine."
"Shutup, shutup, shutup," said Jason.
"What's up with you?"
"It's wrong! We shouldn't be up here! Can't you feel it?"
"Oh, sit down, man," said Weaver. "It's fine. Can't feel nothing but the air. And there's still more scumble in the jug."
Baker leaned back.
"I remember an old story about this place," he said. "Some man went to sleep up here once, when he was out hunting."
The bottle glugged in the dusk.
"So what? I can do that," said Carter. "I go to sleep every night, reg'lar."
"Ah, but this man, when he woke up and went home, his wife was carrying on with someone else and all his children had grown up and didn't know who he was."
"Happens to me just about every day," said Weaver gloomily.
Baker sniffed.
"You know, it does smell a bit like snow. You know? That kind of sharp smell."
Thatcher leaned back, cradling his head on his arm.
"Tell you what," he said, "if I thought my old woman'd marry someone else and my hulking great kids'd bugger off and stop eating up the larder every day I'd come up here with a blanket like a shot. Who's got that jug?"
Jason took a pull out of nervousness, and found that he felt better as the alcohol dissolved his synapses.
But he made an effort.
"Hey, lads," he slurred, "'ve got 'nother jug coolin' in the water trough down in the forge, what d'you say? We could all go down there now. Lads? Lads?"
There was the soft sound of snoring.
"Oh, lads."
Jason stood up.
The stars wheeled.
Jason fell down, very gently. The jug rolled out of his hands and bounced across the grass.
The stars twinkled, the breeze was cold, and it smelled of snow.
The king dined alone, which is to say, he dined at one end of the big table and Magrat dined at the other. But they managed to meet up for a last glass of wine in front of the fire.
They always found it difficult to know what to say at moments like this. Neither of them was used to spending what might be called quality time in the company of another person. The conversation tended toward the cryptic.
And mostly it was about the wedding. It's different, for royalty. For one thing, you've already got everything. The traditional wedding list with the complete set of Tupperware and the twelve-piece dining set looks a bit out of place when you've already got a castle with so many furnished rooms that have been closed up for so long that the spiders have evolved into distinct species in accordance with strict evolutionary principles. And you can't simply multiply it all up and ask for An Army in a Red and White Motif to match the kitchen wallpaper. Royalty, when they marry, either get very small things, like exquisitely constructed clockwork eggs, or large bulky items, like duchesses.
And then there's the guest list. It's bad enough at an ordinary wedding, what with old relatives who dribble and swear, brothers who get belligerent after one drink, and various people who Aren't Talking to other people because of What They Said About Our Sharon. Royalty has to deal with entire countries who get belligerent after one drink, and entire kingdoms who Have Broken Off Diplomatic Relations after what the Crown Prince Said About Our Sharon. Verence had managed to work that all out, but then there were the species to consider. Trolls and dwarfs got on all right in Lancre by the simple expedient of having nothing to do with one another, but too many of them under one roof, especially if drink was flowing, and especially if it was flowing in the direction of the dwarfs, and people would Be Breaking People's Arms Off because of what, more or less, Their Ancestors Said About Our Sharon.
And then there's other things . . .
"How's the girl they brought in?"
"I've told Millie to keep an eye on her. What are they doing, those two?"
"I don't know."
You're king, aren't you?"
Verence shifted uneasily.
"But they're witches. I don't like to ask them questions."
"Why not?"
"They might give me answers. And then what would I do?"
"What did Granny want to talk to you about?"
"Oh . . . you know . . . things . . ."
"It wasn't about . . . sex, was it?"
Verence suddenly looked like a man who had been expecting a frontal attack and suddenly finds nasty things happening behind him.
"No! Why?"
"Nanny was trying to give me motherly advice. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. Honestly, they both treat me as if I'm a big child."
"Oh, no. Nothing like that."
They sat on either side of the huge fireplace, both crimson with embarrassment.
Then Magrat said: "Er . . . you did send off for that book, did you? You know . . . the one with the woodcuts?"
"Oh, yes. Yes, I did."
"It ought to have arrived by now."
"Well, we only get a mail coach once a week. I expect it'll come tomorrow. I'm fed up with running down there every week in case Shawn gets there first."
"You are king. You could tell him not to."
"Don't like to, really. He's so keen."
A large log crackled into two across the iron dogs.
"Can you really get books about. . . that?"
"You can get books about anything."
They both stared at the fire. Verence thought: she doesn't like being a queen, I can see that, but that's what you are when you marry a king, all the books say so . . .
And Magrat thought: he was much nicer when he was a man with silver bells on his hat and slept every night on the floor in front of his master's door. I could talk to him then . . .
Verence clapped his hands together.
"Well, that's about it, then. Busy day tomorrow, what with all the guests coming and everything."
"Yes. It's going to be a long day."
"Very nearly the longest day. Haha."
"Yes."
"I expect they've put warming pans in our beds."
"Has Shawn got the hang of it now?"
"I hope so. I can't afford any more mattresses."
It was a great hall. Shadows piled up in the corners, clustered at either end.
"I suppose," said Magrat, very slowly, as they stared at the fire, "they haven't really had many books here in Lancre. Up until now."
"Literacy is a great thing."
"They got along without them, I suppose."
"Yes, but not properly. Their husbandry is really very primitive."
Magrat looked at the fire. Their wifery wasn't up to much either, she thought.
"So we'd better be off to bed, then, do you think?"
"I suppose so."
Verence took down two silver candlesticks, and lit the candles with a taper. He handed one to Magrat.
"Goodnight, then."
"Goodnight."
They kissed, and turned away, and headed for their own rooms.
The sheets on Magrat's bed were just beginning to turn brown. She pulled out the warming pan and dropped it out of the window.
She glared at the garderobe.
Magrat was probably the only person in Lancre who worried about things being biodegradable. Everyone else just hoped things would last and knew that damn near everything went rotten if you left it long enough.
At home — correction, at the cottage where she used to live — there had been a privy at the bottom of the garden.
She'd approved of it. With a regular bucket of ashes and a copy of last year's Almanack on a nail and a bunch-of-grapes cut out on the door it functioned quite effectively. About once every few months she'd have to dig a big hole and get someone to help her move the shed itself.
The garderobe was this: a sort of small roofed-in room inside the wall, with a wooden seat positioned over a large square hole that went down all the way to the foot of the castle wall far below, where there was an opening from which biodegradability took place once a week by means of an organodynamic process known as Shawn Ogg and his wheelbarrow. That much Magrat understood. It kind of fitted in with the whole idea of royalty and commonality. What shocked her were the hooks.
They were for storing clothes in the garderobe. Millie had explained that the more expensive furs and things were hung there. Moths were kept away by the draught from the hole and . . . the smell[23].
Magrat had put her foot down about that, at least.
Now she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.
Of course she wanted to marry Verence, even with his weak chin and slightly runny eyes. In the pit of the night Magrat knew that she was in no position to be choosy, and getting a king in the circumstances was a stroke of luck.
It was just that she had preferred him when he'd been a Fool. There's something about a man who tinkles gently as he moves.
It was just that she could see a future of bad tapestry and sitting looking wistfully out of the window.
It was just that she was fed up with books of etiquette and lineage and Twurp's Peerage of the Fifteen Mountains and the Sto Plains.
You had to know this kind of thing, to be a queen. There were books full of the stuff in the Long Gallery, and she hadn't even explored the far end. How to address the third cousin of an earl. What the pictures on shields meant, all those lions passant and regardant. And the clothes weren't getting any better. Magrat had drawn the line at a wimple, and she wasn't at all happy about the big pointy hat with the scarf dangling from it. It probably looked beautiful on the Lady of Shallot, but on Magrat it looked as though someone had dropped a big ice cream on her neck.
Nanny Ogg sat in front of her fire in her dressing gown, smoking her pipe and idly cutting her toenails. There was the occasional ping and ricochet from distant parts of the room, and a small tinkle as an oil lamp was smashed.
Granny Weatherwax lay on her bed, still and cold. In her blue-veined hands, the words: I AM NOT DEAD . . .
Her mind drifted across the forest, searching, searching. . .
The trouble was, she could not go where there were no eyes to see or ears to hear.
So she never noticed the hollow near the stones, where eight men slept.
And dreamed . . .
Lancre is cut off from the rest of the lands of mankind by a bridge over Lancre Gorge, above the shallow but poisonously fast and treacherous Lancre River[24].
The coach pulled up at the far end.
There was a badly painted red, black, and white post across the road.
The coachman sounded his horn.
"What's up?" said Ridcully, leaning out of the window.
"Troll bridge."
"Whoops."
After a while there was a booming sound under the bridge, and a troll clambered over the parapet. It was quite overdressed, for a troll. In addition to the statutory loincloth, it was wearing a helmet. Admittedly it had been designed for a human head, and was attached to the much larger troll head by string, but there probably wasn't a better word than "wearing."
"What's up?" said the Bursar, waking up.
"There's a troll on the bridge," said Ridcully, "but it's underneath a helmet, so it's probably official and will get into serious trouble if it eats people[25]. Nothing to worry about."
The Bursar giggled, because he was on the upcurve of whatever switchback his mind was currently riding.
The troll appeared at the coach window.
"Afternoon, your lordships," it said. "Customs inspection."
"I don't think we have any," babbled the Bursar happily. "I mean, we used to have a tradition of rolling boiled eggs downhill on Soul Cake Tuesday, but-"
"I means," said the troll, "do you have any beer, spirits, wines, liquors, hallucinogenic herbage, or books of a lewd or licentious nature?"
Ridcully pulled the Bursar back from the window.
"No," he said.
"No?"
"No."
"Sure?"
"Yes."
"Would you like some?"
"We haven't even got," said the Bursar, despite Ridcully's efforts to sit on his head, "any billygoats."