Something fluttered weakly at the window of the castle mews. There was no glass in the frame, just thin wooden slats to allow some passage of air.
And there was a scrabbling, and then a faint pecking, and then silence.
The hawks watched.
Outside the window something went
whoomph
.
Beams of brilliant light jerked across the far wall and, slowly, the bars began to char.
Nanny Ogg knew that while the actual party would be in the Great Hall all the fun would be outside, in the courtyard around the big fire. Inside it’d be all quails’ eggs, goose-liver jam and little sandwiches that were four to the mouthful. Outside it’d be roasted potatoes floating in vats of butter and a whole stag on a spit. Later on, there’d be a command performance by that man who put weasels down his trousers, a form of entertainment that Nanny ranked higher than grand opera.
As a witch, of course, she’d be welcome anywhere and it was always a good idea to remind the nobs of this, in case they forgot. It was a hard choice, but she decided to stay outside and have a good dinner of venison because, like many old ladies, Nanny Ogg was a bottomless pit for free food. Then she’d go inside and fill the gaps with the fiddly dishes. Besides, they probably had that expensive fizzy wine in there and Nanny had quite a taste for it, provided it was served in a big enough mug. But you needed a good depth of beer before you loaded up on the fancy stuff.
She picked up a tankard, ambled to the front of the queue at the beer barrel, gently nudged aside the head of a man who’d decided to spend the evening lying under the tap, and drew herself a pint.
As she turned back she saw the splay-footed figure of Agnes approaching, still slightly uneasy with the idea of wearing the new pointy hat in public.
“Wotcha, girl,” said Nanny. “Try some of the venison, it’s good stuff.”
Agnes looked doubtfully at the roasting meat. Lancre people looked after the calories and let the vitamins go hang.
“Do you think I could get a salad?” she ventured.
“Hope not,” said Nanny happily
“Lot of people here,” said Agnes.
“
Everyone
got a invite,” said Nanny. “Magrat was very gracious about that, I thought.”
Agnes craned her head. “Can’t see Granny around anywhere, though.”
“She’ll be inside, tellin’ people what to do.”
“I haven’t seen her around much at all, lately,” said Agnes. “She’s got something on her mind, I think.”
Nanny narrowed her eyes.
“You think so?” she said, adding to herself: you’re getting
good
, miss.
“It’s just that ever since we heard about the birth,” Agnes waved a plump hand to indicate the general high-cholesterol celebration around them, “she’s been so…stretched, sort of. Twanging.”
Nanny Ogg thumbed some tobacco into her pipe and struck a match on her boot.
“You certainly notice things, don’t you,” she said, puffing away. “Notice, notice, notice. We’ll have to call you Miss Notice.”
“I certainly
notice
you always fiddle around with your pipe when you’re thinking thoughts you don’t much like,” said Agnes. “It’s displacement activity.”
Through a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke Nanny reflected that Agnes read books. All the witches who’d lived in her cottage were bookish types. They thought you could see life through books but you couldn’t, the reason being that the words got in the way.
“She has been a bit quiet, that’s true,” she said. “Best to let her get on with it.”
“I thought perhaps she was sulking about the priest who’ll be doing the Naming,” said Agnes.
“Oh, old Brother Perdore’s all right,” said Nanny. “Gabbles away in some ancient lingo, keeps it short and then you just give him sixpence for his trouble, fill him up with brandy and load him on his donkey and off he goes.”
“What? Didn’t you hear?” said Agnes. “He’s laid up over in Skund. Broke his wrist and both legs falling off his donkey.”
Nanny Ogg took her pipe out of her mouth.
“Why wasn’t I told?” she said.
“I don’t know, Nanny. Mrs. Weaver told me yesterday.”
“Oo, that woman! I passed her in the street this morning! She could’ve said!”
Nanny poked her pipe back in her mouth as though stabbing all uncommunicative gossips. “How can you break both your legs falling off a donkey?”
“It was going up that little path on the side of Skund Gorge. He fell sixty feet.”
“Oh? Well…that’s a tall donkey, right enough.”
“So the King sent down to the Omnian mission in Ohulan to send us up a priest, apparently,” said Agnes.
“He did
what
?” said Nanny.
A small gray tent was inexpertly pitched in a field just outside the town. The rising wind made it flap, and tore at the poster which had been pinned onto an easel outside.
It read:
GOOD NEWS
!
OM WELCOMES YOU
!!!
In fact no one had turned up to the small introductory service that Mightily Oats had organized that afternoon, but since he had an-nounced one he had gone ahead with it anyway, singing a few cheerful hymns to his own accompaniment on the small portable harmonium and then preaching a very short sermon to the wind and the sky.
Now the Quite Reverend Oats looked at himself in the mirror. He was a bit uneasy about the mirror, to be honest. Mirrors had led to one of the Church’s innumerable schisms, one side saying that since they encouraged vanity they were bad, and the other saying that since they reflected the goodness of Om they were holy. Oats had not quite formed his own opinion, being by nature someone who tries to see something in both sides of every question, but at least the mirrors helped him get his complicated clerical collar on straight.
It was still very new. The Very Reverend Mekkle, who’d taken Pastoral Practice, had advised that the rules about starch were only really a guideline, but Oats hadn’t wanted to put a foot wrong and his collar could have been used as a razor.
He carefully lowered his holy turtle pendant into place, noting its gleam with some satisfaction, and picked up his finely printed graduation copy of the
Book of Om.
Some of his fellow students had spent hours carefully ruffling the pages to give them that certain straight-and-narrow credibility, but Oats had refrained from this as well. Besides, he knew most of it by heart.
Feeling rather guilty, because there had been some admonitions at the college against using holy writ merely for fortune telling, he shut his eyes and let the book flop open at random.
Then he opened his eyes quickly and read the first passage they encountered.
It was somewhere in the middle of Brutha’s Second Letter to the Omish, gently chiding them for not replying to the First Letter to the Omish.
“…silence is an answer that begs three more questions. Seek and you will find, but first you should know what you seek…”
Oh well. He shut the book.
What a place! What a
dump
. He’d had a short walk after the service, and every path seemed to end in a cliff or a sheer drop. Never had he seen such a
vertical
country. Things had rustled at him in the bushes, and he’d got his shoes muddy. As for the people he’d met…well, simple ignorant country folk, salt of the earth, obviously, but they’d just stared at him carefully from a distance, as if they were waiting for something to happen to him and didn’t care to be too close to him when it did.
But still, he mused, it
did
say in Brutha’s Letter to the Simonites that if you wished the light to be seen you had to take it into dark places. And this was certainly a dark place.
He said a small prayer and stepped out into the muddy, windy darkness.
Granny flew high above the roaring treetops, under a half moon.
She distrusted a moon like that. A full moon could only wane, a new moon could only wax, but a half moon, balancing so precariously between light and dark…well, it could do anything.
Witches always lived on the edges of things. She felt the tingle in her hands. It was not just from the frosty air. There was an
edge
somewhere. Something was beginning.
On the other side of the sky the Hublights were burning around the mountains at the center of the world, bright enough even to fight the pale light of the moon. Green and gold flames danced in the air over the central mountains. It was rare to see them at this time of the year, and Granny wondered what that might signify.
Slice was perched along the sides of a cleft in the mountains that couldn’t be dignified by the name of valley. In the moonlight she saw the pale upturned face waiting in the shadows of garden as she came into land.
“Evening, Mr. Ivy,” she said, leaping off. “Upstairs, is she?”
“In the barn,” said Ivy, flatly. “The cow kicked her…hard.”
Granny’s expression stayed impassive.
“We shall see,” she said, “what may be done.”
In the barn, one look at Mrs. Patternoster’s face told her how little that might now be. The woman wasn’t a witch, but she knew all the practical midwifery that can be picked up in an isolated village, be it from cows, goats, horses or humans.
“It’s bad,” she whispered, as Granny looked at the moaning figure on the straw. “I reckon we’ll lose both of them…or maybe just one…”
There was, if you were listening for it, just the suggestion of a question in that sentence. Granny focused her mind.
“It’s a boy,” she said.
Mrs. Patternoster didn’t bother to wonder how Granny knew, but her expression indicated that a little more weight had been added to a burden.
“I’d better go and put it to John Ivy, then,” she said.
She’d barely moved before Granny Weatherwax’s hand locked on her arm.
“He’s no part in this,” she said.
“But after all, he
is
the—”
“He’s no part in this.”
Mrs. Patternoster looked into the blue stare and knew two things. One was that Mr. Ivy had no part in this, and the other was that anything that happened in this barn was never, ever, going to be mentioned again.
“I think I can bring ’em to mind,” said Granny, letting go and rolling up her sleeves. “Pleasant couple, as I recall. He’s a good husband, by all accounts.” She poured warm water from its jug into the bowl that the midwife had set up on a manger.
Mrs. Patternoster nodded.
“Of course, it’s difficult for a man working these steep lands alone,” Granny went on, washing her hands. Mrs. Patternoster nodded again, mournfully.
“Well, I reckon you should take him into the cottage, Mrs. Patternoster, and make him a cup of tea,” Granny commanded. “You can tell him I’m doing all I can.”
This time the midwife nodded gratefully.
When she had fled, Granny laid a hand on Mrs. Ivy’s damp forehead.
“Well now, Florence Ivy,” she said, “let us see what might be done. But first of all…no pain…”
As she moved her head she caught sight of the moon through the unglazed window. Between the light and the dark…well, sometimes that’s where you had to be.
I
NDEED
.
Granny didn’t bother to turn around.
“I thought you’d be here,” she said, as she knelt down in the straw.
W
HERE ELSE
? said Death.
“Do you know who you’re here for?”
T
HAT IS NOT MY CHOICE
. O
N THE
VERY
EDGE YOU WILL ALWAYS FIND SOME UNCERTAINTY
.
Granny felt the words in her head for several seconds, like little melting cubes of ice. On the very, very edge, then, there had to be…judgment.
“There’s too much damage here,” she said, at last. “Too much.”
A few minutes later she felt the life stream past her. Death had the decency to leave without a word.
When Mrs. Patternoster tremulously knocked on the door and pushed it open, Granny was in the cow’s stall. The midwife saw her stand up holding a piece of thorn.
“Been in the beast’s leg all day,” she said. “No wonder it was fretful. Try and make sure he doesn’t kill the cow, you understand? They’ll need it.”
Mrs. Patternoster glanced down at the rolled-up blanket in the straw. Granny had tactfully placed it out of sight of Mrs. Ivy, who was sleeping now.
“I’ll tell him,” said Granny, brushing off her dress. “As for her, well, she’s strong and young and you know what to do. You keep an eye on her, and me or Nanny Ogg will drop in when we can. If she’s up to it, they may need a wet nurse up at the castle, and that may be good for everyone.”
It was doubtful that anyone in Slice would defy Granny Weatherwax, but Granny saw the faintest gray shadow of disapproval in the midwife’s expression.
“You still reckon I should’ve asked Mr. Ivy?” she said.
“That’s what I would have done…” the woman mumbled.
“You don’t like him? You think he’s a bad man?” said Granny. adjusting her hat pins.
“No!”
“Then what’s he ever done to
me
, that I should hurt him so?”
Agnes had to run to keep up. Nanny Ogg, when roused, could move as though powered by pistons.
“But we get a lot of priests up here, Nanny!”
“Not like the Omnians!” snapped Nanny. “We had ’em up here last year. A couple of ’em
knocked
at my
door
!”
“Well, that
is
what a door is f—”
“
And
they shoved a leaflet under it saying ‘Repent!’” Nanny Ogg went on. “Repent? Me? Cheek! I can’t start repenting at my time of life. I’d never get any work done. Anyway,” she added, “I ain’t sorry for most of it.”
“You’re getting a bit excited, I think—”
“They set fire to people!” said Nanny.
“I think I read somewhere that they used to, yes,” said Agnes, panting with the effort of keeping up. “But that was a long time ago, Nanny! The ones I saw in Ankh-Morpork just handed out leaflets and preached in a big tent and sang rather dreary songs—”
“Hah! The leopard does not change his shorts, my girl!”
They ran along a corridor, and out from behind a screen into the hubbub of the Great Hall.
“Knee-deep in nobs,” said Nanny, craning. “Ah, there’s our Shawn…”
Lancre’s standing army was lurking by a pillar, probably in the hope that no one would see him in his footman’s powdered wig, which had been made for a much bigger footman.
The kingdom didn’t have much of an executive arm of government, and most of its actual hands belonged to Nanny Ogg’s youngest son. Despite the earnest efforts of King Verence, who was quite a forward-looking ruler in a nervous kind of way, the people of Lancre could not be persuaded to accept a democracy at any price and the place had not, regrettably, attracted much in the way of government. A lot of the bits it couldn’t avoid were done by Shawn. He emptied the palace privies, delivered its sparse mail, guarded the walls, operated the Royal Mint, balanced the budget, helped out the gardener in his spare time and, on those occasions these days when it was felt necessary to man the borders, and Verence felt that yellow and black striped poles
did
give a country such a
professional
look, he stamped passports, or at a pinch any other pieces of paper the visitor could produce, such as the back of an envelope, with a stamp he’d carved quite nicely out of half a potato. He took it all very seriously. At times like this, he buttled when Spriggins the butler was not on duty, or if an extra hand was needed he footed as well.
“Evening, our Shawn,” said Nanny Ogg. “I see you’ve got that dead lamb on your head again.”
“Aoow,
Mum
,” said Shawn, trying to adjust the wig.
“Where’s this priest that’s doing the Naming?” said Nanny.
“What, Mum? Dunno, Mum. I stopped shouting out the names half an hour ago and got on to serving the bits of cheese on sticks—aoow, Mum, you shouldn’t take that many, Mum!”
*
Nanny Ogg sucked the cocktail goodies off four sticks in one easy movement, and looked speculatively at the throng.
“I’m going to have a word with young Verence,” said Nanny.
“He
is
the king, Nanny,” said Agnes.
“That’s no reason for him to go around acting like he was royalty.”
“I think it is, actually.”
“None of that cheek. You just go and find this Omnian and keep an eye on him.”
“What should I look for?” said Agnes sourly. “A column of smoke?”
“They all wear black,” said Nanny firmly. “Hah! Typical!”
“Well? So do we.”
“Right! But ours is…ours is…” Nanny thumped her chest, causing considerable ripples, “ours is the
right
black, right? Now, off you go and look inconspicuous,” added Nanny, a lady wearing a two-foot-tall pointed black hat. She stared around at the crowd again, and nudged her son.
“Shawn, you
did
deliver an invite to Esme Weatherwax, didn’t you?”
He looked horrified. “Of
course
, Mum.”
“Shove it under her door?”
“No, Mum. You know she gave me an ear-bashin’ when the snails got at that postcard last year. I put it under a stone, good and tight.”
“There’s a good boy,” said Nanny.
Lancre people didn’t bother much with letterboxes. Mail was infrequent but biting gales were not. Why have a slot in the door to let in unsolicited winds? So letters were left under large stones, wedged firmly in flowerpots or slipped under the door.
There were never very many.
*
Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants. The chips on some shoulders had been passed down for generations. Some had antique value. A bloody good grudge, Lancre reckoned, was like a fine old wine. You looked after it carefully and left it to your children.
You never
wrote
to anyone. If you had anything to say, you said it to their face. It kept everything nice and hot.
Agnes edged into the crowd, feeling stupid. She often did. Now she knew why Magrat Garlick had always worn those soppy floppy dresses and never wore the pointy hat. Wear the pointy hat and dress in black, and on Agnes there was plenty of black to go around, and everyone saw you in a certain way. You were A Witch. It had its good points. Among the
bad
ones was the fact that people turned to you when they were in trouble and never thought for a moment that you couldn’t cope.
But she got a bit of respect, even from people who could remember her
before
she’d been allowed to wear the hat. They tended to make way for her, although people tended to make way in any case for Agnes when she was in full steam.
“Evening, miss…”
She turned, and saw Hodgesaargh in full official regalia.
It was important not to smile at times like this, so Agnes kept a straight face and tried to ignore Perdita’s hysterical laughter at the back of her mind.
She’d seen Hodgesaargh occasionally, around the edges of the woods or up on the moors. Usually the royal falconer was vainly fighting off his hawks, who attacked him for a pastime, and in the case of King Henry kept picking him up and dropping him again in the belief that he was a giant tortoise.
It wasn’t that he was bad falconer. A few other people in Lancre kept hawks and reckoned he was one of the best trainers in the mountains, possibly because he was so single-minded about it. It was just that he trained every feathery little killing machine so well that it became unable to resist seeing what he tasted like.
He didn’t deserve it. Nor did he deserve his ceremonial costume. Usually, when not in the company of King Henry, he just wore working leathers and about three sticking plasters, but what he was wearing now had been designed hundreds of years before by someone with a lyrical view of the countryside and who had never had to run through a bramble bush with a gerfalcon hanging on their ear. It had a lot of red and gold in it and would have looked much better on someone two feet taller who had the legs for red stockings. The hat was best not talked about, but if you had to, you’d talk about it in terms of something big, red and floppy. With a feather in it.
“Miss Nitt?” said Hodgesaargh.
“Sorry…I was looking at your hat.”
“It’s good, isn’t it,” said Hodgesaargh amiably. “This is William. She’s a buzzard. But she thinks she’s a chicken. She can’t fly. I’m having to teach her how to hunt.”
Agnes was craning her neck for any signs of overtly religious activity, but the incongruity of the slightly bedraggled creature on Hodgesaargh’s wrist brought her gaze back down again.
“How?” she said.
“She walks into the burrows and kicks the rabbits to death. And I’ve almost cured her of crowing. Haven’t I, William?”
“William?” said Agnes. “Oh…yes.” To a falconer, she remembered, all hawks were “she.”
“Have you seen any Omnians here?” she whispered, leaning down toward him.
“What kind of bird are they, miss?” said the falconer uneasily. He always seemed to have a preoccupied air when not discussing hawks, like a man with a big dictionary who couldn’t find the index.
“Oh, er…don’t worry about it, then.” She stared at William again and said, “How? I mean, how does a bird like
that
think he’s—she’s a
chicken
?”
“Can happen all too easy, miss,” said Hodgesaargh. “Thomas Peerless over in Bad Ass pinched an egg and put it under a broody hen, miss. He didn’t take the chicken away in time. So William thought if her mum was a chicken, then so was she.”
“Well, that’s—”
“And that’s what happens, miss. When I raise them from eggs I don’t do that. I’ve got a special glove, miss—”
“That’s absolutely fascinating, but I’d better go,” said Agnes, quickly.
“Yes, miss.”
She’d spotted the quarry, walking across the hall.
There was something unmistakable about him. It was as if he was a witch. It wasn’t that his black robe ended at the knees and became a pair of legs encased in gray socks and sandals, or that his hat had a tiny crown but a brim big enough to set out your dinner on. It was because wherever he walked, he was in a little empty space that seemed to move around him, just like you got around witches. No one wanted to get too close to witches.
She couldn’t see his face. He was making a beeline for the buffet table.
“Excuse me, Miss Nitt?”
Shawn had appeared at her side. He stood very stiffly, because if he made any sudden turns the oversized wig tended to spin on his head.
“Yes, Shawn?” said Agnes.
“The queen wants a word, miss,” said Shawn.
“With
me
?”
“Yes, miss. She’s up in the Ghastly Green Drawing Room, miss.” Shawn swiveled slowly. His wig stayed facing the same way.
Agnes hesitated. It was a royal command, she supposed, even if it was only from Magrat Garlick as was, and as such it superseded anything Nanny had asked her to do. Anyway, she had spotted the priest, and it was not as though he was going to set fire to everyone over the canapés. She’d better go.