A little hatch shot open behind the doleful Igor.
“Why’ve we stopped
this
time?”
“Troll’th in the way, marthter.”
“A what?”
Igor rolled his eyes. “A troll’th in the way,” he said.
The hatch shut. There was a whispered conversation inside the coach. The hatch opened.
“You mean a
troll
?”
“
Yeth
, marthter.”
“Run it down!”
The troll advanced, holding a flickering torch above its head. At some point recently someone had said “this troll needs a uniform” and had found that the only thing in the armory that would fit was the helmet, and then only if you attached it to his head with string.
“The old Count wouldn’t have told me to run it down,” Igor muttered, not quite under his breath. “But, then,
he
wath a
gentleman
.”
“What was that?” a female voice snapped.
The troll reached the coach and banged its knuckles on its helmet respectfully.
“Evenin’,” it said. “Dis is a bit embarrassin’. You know a pole?”
“Pole?” said Igor suspiciously.
“It are a long wooden fing—”
“Yeth? Well? What about it?”
“I’d like you to imagine, right, dat dere’s a black an’ yellow striped one across dis road, right? Only ’cos we’ve only got der one, an’ it’s bein’ used up on der Copperhead road tonight.”
The hatch slid open.
“Get a move on, man! Run it down!”
“I could go an’ get it if you like,” said the troll, shifting nervously from one huge foot to the other. “Only it wouldn’t be here till tomorrow, right? Or you could pretend it’s here right now, an’ then I could pretend to lift it up, and dat’d be okay, right?”
“Do it, then,” said Igor. He ignored the grumbling behind him. The old Count had always been polite to trolls even though you couldn’t bite them, and that was
real
class in a vampire.
“Only firs’ I gotta stamp somethin’,” said the troll. It held up half a potato and a paint-soaked rag.
“Why?”
“Shows you’ve bin past me,” said the troll.
“Yeth, but we will have been parthed you,” Igor pointed out. “I mean, everyone will know we’ve been parthed you becauthe we
are
.”
“But it’ll show you done it
officially
,” said the troll.
“What’ll happen if we jutht drive on?” said Igor.
“Er…den I won’t lift der pole,” said the troll.
Locked in a metaphysical conundrum, they both looked at the patch of road where the virtual pole barred the way.
Normally, Igor wouldn’t have wasted any time. But the family had been getting on his nerves, and he reacted in the traditional way of the put-upon servant by suddenly becoming very stupid. He leaned down and addressed the coach’s occupants through the hatch.
“It’th a border check, marthter,” he said. “We got to have thomething thtamped.”
There was more whispering inside the coach, and then a large white rectangle, edged in gold, was thrust ungraciously through the hatch. Igor passed it down.
“Seems a shame,” said the troll, stamping it inexpertly and handing it back.
“What’th thith?” Igor demanded.
“Pardon?”
“Thith…thtupid mark!”
“Well, the potato wasn’t big enough for the official seal and I don’t know what a seal look like in any case but I reckon dat’s a good carvin’ of a duck I done there,” said the troll cheerfully.
“Now…are you ready? ’Cos I’m liftin’ der pole. Here it goes now. Look at it pointin’ up in der air like dat. Dis means you can go.”
The coach rolled on a little way and stopped just before the bridge.
The troll, aware that he’d done his duty, wandered toward it and heard what he considered to be a perplexing conversation, although to Big Jim Beef most conversations involving polysyllabic words were shrouded in mystery.
“Now, I want you to all pay attention—”
“Father, we
have
done this before.”
“The point can’t be hammered home far enough.
That
is the Lancre River down there. Running water. And we will cross it. It is as well to consider that your ancestors, although quite capable of undertaking journeys of hundreds of miles, nevertheless firmly believed that they couldn’t cross a stream. Do I need to point out the contradiction?”
“No, Father.”
“Good. Cultural conditioning would be the death of us, if we are not careful. Drive on, Igor.”
The troll watched them go. Coldness seemed to follow them across the bridge. Granny Weatherwax was airborne again, glad of the clean, crisp air. She was well above the trees and, to the benefit of all concerned, no one could see her face.
Isolated homesteads passed below, a few with lighted windows but most of them dark, because people would long ago have headed for the palace.
There was a story under every roof, she knew. She knew all about stories. But those down there were the stories that were never to be told, the little secret stories, enacted in little rooms…
They were about those times when medicines didn’t help and headology was at a loss because a mind was a rage of pain in a body that had become its own enemy, when people were simply in a prison made of flesh, and at times like this she could
let them go
. There was no need for desperate stuff with a pillow, or deliberate mistakes with the medicine. You didn’t push them out of the world, you just stopped the world pulling them back. You just reached in, and…showed them the way.
There was never anything said. Sometimes you saw in the face of the relatives the request they’d never, ever put words around, or maybe they’d say “is there something you can do for him?” and this was, perhaps, the code. If you dared ask, they’d be shocked that you might have thought they meant
anything
other than, perhaps, a comfier pillow.
And any midwife, out in isolated cottages on bloody nights, would know all the other little secrets…
Never to be told…
She’d been a witch here all her life. And one of the things a witch did was stand right on the edge, where the decisions had to be made. You made them so that others didn’t have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there
were
no decisions to be made, no little secrets, that things
just happened
. You never said what you knew. And you didn’t ask for anything in return.
The castle was brightly lit, she saw. She could even make out figures around the bonfire.
Something else caught her eye, because she was going to look everywhere but at the castle now, and it jolted her out of her mood. Mist was pouring over the mountains and sliding down the far valleys under the moonlight. One strand was flowing toward the castle and pouring, very slowly, into the Lancre Gorge.
Of course you got mists in the spring, when the weather was changing, but this mist was coming from Uberwald.
The door to Magrat’s room was opened by Millie Chillum, the maid, who curtseyed to Agnes, or at least to her hat, and then left her alone with the Queen, who was at her dressing table.
Agnes wasn’t sure of the protocol, but tried a sort of republican curtsey. This caused considerable movement in outlying regions.
Queen Magrat of Lancre blew her nose and stuffed the hankie up the sleeve of her dressing gown.
“Oh, hello, Agnes,” she said. “Take a seat, do. You don’t have to bob up and down like that. Millie does it all the time and I get seasick. Anyway, strictly speaking, witches bow.”
“Er…” Agnes began. She glanced at the crib in the corner. It had more loops and lace than any piece of furniture should.
“She’s asleep,” said Magrat. “Oh, the crib? Verence ordered it all the way from Ankh-Morpork. I said the old one they’d always used was fine, but he’s very, you know…
modern
.
Please
sit down.”
“You wanted me, your maj—” Agnes began, still uncertain. It was turning out to be a very complicated evening, and she wasn’t sure even now how she felt about Magrat. The woman had left echoes of herself in the cottage—an old bangle lost under the bed, rather soppy notes in some of the ancient notebooks, vases full of desiccated flowers…You can build up a very strange view of someone via the things they leave behind the dresser.
“I just wanted a little talk,” said Magrat. “It’s a bit…look, I’m really very happy, but…well, Millie’s nice but she agrees with me all the time and Nanny and Granny still treat me as if I wasn’t, well, you know, Queen and everything…not that I
want
to be treated as Queen all the time but, well, you know, I want them to know I’m Queen but not
treat
me as one, if you see what I mean…”
“I
think
so,” said Agnes carefully.
Magrat waved her hands in an effort to describe the indescribable. Used handkerchiefs cascaded out of her sleeves.
“I mean…I get dizzy with people bobbing up and down all the time, so when they see me I like them to think ‘Oh, there’s Magrat, she’s Queen now but I shall treat her in a perfectly normal way—’”
“But perhaps just a little bit more politely because she
is
Queen, after all,” Agnes suggested.
“Well, yes…exactly. Actually, Nanny’s not too bad, at least she treats everyone the same all the time, but when Granny looks at me you can see her thinking ‘Oh, there’s Magrat. Make the tea, Magrat.’ One day I
swear
I’ll make a very cutting remark. It’s as if they think I’m doing this as a
hobby
!”
“I do know what you mean.”
“It’s as if they think I’m going to get it out of my system and go back to witching again. They wouldn’t say that, of course, but that’s what they think. They really don’t believe there’s any other sort of life.”
“That’s true.”
“How’s the old cottage?”
“There’s a lot of mice,” said Agnes.
“I know. I used to feed them. Don’t tell Granny. She’s here, isn’t she?”
“Haven’t seen her yet,” said Agnes.
“Ah, she’ll be waiting for a dramatic moment,” said Magrat. “And you know what? I’ve never caught her
actually
waiting for a dramatic moment, not in all the, well, things we’ve been involved in. I mean, if it was you or me, we’d be hanging around in the hall or something, but she just walks in and it’s the right time.”
“She says you make your own right time,” said Agnes.
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“And you say she’s not here yet? It was the first card we did!” Magrat leaned closer. “Verence got them to put extra gold leaf on it. I’m amazed it doesn’t go clang when she puts it down. How are you at making the tea?”
“They always complain,” said Agnes.
“They do, don’t they. Three lumps of sugar for Nanny Ogg, right?”
“It’s not as if they even give me tea money,” said Agnes. She sniffed. There was a slight mustiness to the air.
“It’s not worth baking biscuits, I can tell you that,” said Magrat. “I used to spend hours doing fancy ones with crescent moons and so on. You might just as well get them from the shop.”
She sniffed, too. “That’s
not
the baby,” she said. “I’m sure Shawn Ogg’s been so busy arranging things he hasn’t had time to clean up the privy pit the last two weeks. The smell comes right up the garderobe in the Gong Tower when the wind gusts. I’ve tried hanging up fragrant herbs but they sort of dissolve.”
She looked uncertain, as if a worse prospect than lax castle sanitation had crossed her mind. “Er…she must’ve
got
the invitation, mustn’t she?”
“Shawn says he delivered it,” said Agnes. “And she probably said,” and here her voice changed, becoming clipped and harsh, “‘I can’t be havin’ with that at my time of life. I’ve never bin one to put meself forward, no one could ever say I’m one to put meself forward.’”
Magrat’s mouth was an O of amazement.
“That’s so like her it’s frightening!” she said.
“It’s one of the few things I’m good at,” said Agnes, in her normal voice. “Big hair, a wonderful personality, and an ear for sounds.”
And two minds,
Perdita added. “She’ll come anyway,” Agnes went on, ignoring the inner voice.
“But it’s gone half eleven…good grief, I’d better get dressed! Can you give me a hand?”
She hurried into the dressing room with Agnes tagging along behind.
“I even wrote a bit underneath asking her to be a godmother,” she said, sitting down in front of the mirror and scrabbling among the debris of makeup. “She’s always secretly wanted to be one.”
“That’s something to wish on a child,” said Agnes, without thinking.
Magrat’s hand stopped halfway to her face, in a little cloud of powder, and Agnes saw her horrified look in the mirror. Then the jaw tightened, and for a moment the Queen had just the same expression that Granny sometimes employed.
“Well, if it was a choice of wishing a child health, wealth and happiness, or Granny Weatherwax being on her side, I know which I’d choose,” said Magrat. “You must have seen her in action.”
“Once or twice, yes,” Agnes conceded.
“She’ll never be beaten,” said Magrat. “You wait till you see her when she’s in a tight corner. She’s got that way of…putting part of herself somewhere safe. It’s as if…as if she gives herself to someone else to keep hidden for a while. It’s all part of that Borrowing stuff she does.”
Agnes nodded. Nanny had warned her about it but, even so, it was unnerving to turn up at Granny’s cottage and find her stretched out on the floor as stiff as a stick and holding, in fingers that were almost blue, a card with the words:
I ATE’NT DEAD
.
*
It just meant that
she
was out in the world somewhere, seeing life through the eyes of a badger or a pigeon, riding as an unheeded passenger in its mind.
“And you know what?” Magrat went on. “It’s just like those magicians in Howondaland who keep their heart hidden in a jar somewhere, for safety, so they can’t be killed. There’s something about it in a book at the cottage.”
“Wouldn’t have to be a big jar,” said Agnes.
“That wasn’t fair,” said Magrat. She paused. “Well…not fair for most of the time. Often, anyway. Sometimes, at least. Can you help me with this bloody ruff?”
There was a gurgle from the cradle.
“What name are you giving her?” said Agnes.
“You’ll have to wait,” said Magrat.
That made a sort of sense, Agnes admitted, as she followed Magrat and the maids to the hall. In Lancre, you named children at midnight, so that they started a day with a new name. She didn’t know
why
it made sense. It just felt as though, once, someone had found that it worked. Lancrastrians never threw away anything that worked. The trouble was, they seldom
changed
anything that worked, either.
She’d heard that this was depressing King Verence, who was teaching himself kinging out of books. His plans for better irrigation and agriculture were warmly applauded by the people of Lancre, who then did nothing about them. Nor did they take any notice of his scheme for sanitation, i.e., that there should
be
some, since the Lancrastrian idea of posh sanitation was a non-slippery path to the privy and a mail-order catalogue with really soft pages. They’d agreed to the idea of a Royal Society for the Betterment of Mankind, but since this largely consisted of as much time as Shawn Ogg had to spare on Thursday afternoons Mankind was safe from too much Betterment for a while, although Shawn had invented draft excluders for some of the windier parts of the castle, for which the King had awarded him a small medal.
The people of Lancre wouldn’t dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They’d done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked. But they’d also found that it didn’t do to pay too much attention to what the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty years or so and he’d be certain to want something different and so they’d have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practice the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the plowing, sowing, growing and harvesting. It was, as they saw it, a social contract. They did what they always did, and he let them.
But sometimes, he kinged…
In Lancre Castle, King Verence looked at himself in the mirror, and sighed.
“Mrs. Ogg,” he said, adjusting his crown, “I have, as you know, a great respect for the witches of Lancre but this is, with respect, broadly a matter of general policy which, I respectfully submit, is a matter for the King.” He adjusted the crown again, while Spriggins the butler brushed his robe. “We must be tolerant. Really, Mrs. Ogg, I haven’t seen you in a state like this before—”
“They go round setting fire to people!” said Nanny, annoyed at all the respect.
“
Used to
, I believe,” said Verence.
“And it was witches they burned!”
Verence removed his crown and polished it with his sleeve in an infuriatingly reasonable manner.
“I’ve always understood they set fire to practically everybody,” he said, “but that was some time ago, wasn’t it?”
“Our Jason heard ’em preaching once down in Ohulan and they was saying some very nasty things about witches,” said Nanny.
“Sadly, not everyone knows witches like we do,” said Verence, with what Nanny on her overheated state thought was unnecessary diplomacy.
“And our Wayne said they tries to turn folk against other religions,” she went on. “Since they opened up that mission of theirs even the Offlerians have upped sticks and gone. I mean, it’s one thing saying you’ve got the best god, but sayin’ it’s the
only
real one is a bit of a cheek, in my opinion. I know where I can find at least two any day of the week.
And
they say everyone starts out bad and only gets good by believin’ in Om, which is frankly damn nonsense. I mean, look at your little girl—What’s her name going to be, now…?”
“Everyone will know in twenty minutes, Nanny,” said Verence smoothly.
“Hah!” Nanny’s tone made it clear that Radio Ogg disapproved of this news management. “Well, look…the worst she could put her little hand up to at her age is a few grubby nappies and keepin’ you awake at night. That’s hardly
sinful
, to my mind.”
“But you’ve never objected to the Gloomy Brethren, Nanny. Or to the Wonderers. And the Balancing Monks come through here all the time.”
“But none of
them
object to
me
,” said Nanny.
Verence turned. He was finding this disconcerting. He knew Nanny Ogg very well, but mainly as the person standing just behind Granny Weatherwax and smiling a lot. It was hard to deal with an angry Ogg.
“I really think you’re taking this too much to heart, Mrs. Ogg,” he said.
“Granny Weatherwax won’t like it!” Nanny played the trump card. To her horror, it didn’t seem to have the desired effect.
“Granny Weatherwax isn’t King, Mrs. Ogg,” said Verence. “And the world is changing. There is a new order. Once upon a time trolls were monsters that ate people but now, thanks to the endeavors of men, and of course trolls, of goodwill and peaceful intent we get along very well and I hope we understand each other. This is no longer a time when little kingdoms need only worry about little concerns. We’re part of a big world. We have to
play
that part. For example, what about the Muntab question?”
Nanny Ogg asked the Muntab question. “Where the hell’s Muntab?” she said.
“Several thousand miles away, Mrs. Ogg. But it has ambitions Hubward, and it there’s war with Borogravia we will certainly have to adopt a position.”
“This one several thousand miles away looks fine by me,” said Nanny. “And I don’t see—”
“I’m afraid you don’t,” said Verence. “Nor should you have to. But affairs in distant countries can suddenly end up close to home. If Klatch sneezes, Ankh-Morpork catches a cold. We have to pay attention. Are we always to be part of the Ankh-Morpork hegemony? Are we not in a unique position as we reach the end of the Century of the Fruitbat? The countries widdershins of the Ramtops are beginning to make themselves felt. The ‘werewolf economies,’ as the Patrician in Ankh-Morpork calls them. New powers are emerging. Old countries are blinking in the sunlight of the dawning millennium. And of course we have to maintain friendships with all blocs. And so on. Despite a turbulent past, Omnia is a friendly country…or, at least,” he admitted, “I’m sure they
would
be friendly if they knew about Lancre. Being unpleasant to the priests of its state religion will serve us no good purpose. I’m sure we will not regret it.”
“Let’s hope we won’t,” said Nanny. She gave Verence a withering look. “And I remember you when you were just a man in a funny hat.”
Even this didn’t work. Verence merely sighed again and turned toward the door.
“I still am, Nanny,” he said. “It’s just that this one’s a lot heavier. And now I must go, otherwise we shall be keeping our guests waiting. Ah, Shawn…”