Wyrd Sisters (28 page)

‘Best put the cloth over it when you've done, Esme,' said Nanny. ‘I always get worried someone'll peer in at me when I'm having my bath.'

‘He's on his way,' said Granny, the satisfaction in her voice so strong you could have ground corn with it. She dropped the black velvet bag over the ball.

‘It's a long road,' said Nanny. ‘There's many a slip twixt dress and drawers. There could be bandits.'

‘We shall watch over him,' said Granny.

‘That's not right. If he's going to be king he ought to be able to fight his own battles,' said Magrat.

‘We don't want him to go wasting his strength,' said Nanny primly. ‘We want him good and fresh for when he gets here.'

‘And then, I hope, we shall leave him to fight his battles in his own way,' said Magrat.

Granny clapped her hands together in a businesslike fashion.

‘Quite right,' she said. ‘Provided he looks like winning.'

They had been meeting at Nanny Ogg's cottage. Magrat made an excuse to tarry after Granny left, around dawn, allegedly to help Nanny with tidying up.

‘Whatever happened to not meddling?' she said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘You know, Nanny.'

‘It's not proper meddling,' said Nanny awkwardly. ‘Just helping matters along.'

‘Surely you can't really think that!'

Nanny sat down and fidgeted with a cushion.

‘Well, see, all this not meddling business is fine in the normal course of things,' she said. ‘Not meddling is easy when you don't have to. And then I've got the family to think about. Our Jason's been in a couple of fights because of what people have been saying. Our Shawn was thrown out of the army. The way I see it, when we get the new king in, he should owe us a few favours. It's only fair.'

‘But only last week you were saying—' Magrat stopped, shocked at this display of pragmatism.

‘A week is a long time in magic,' said Nanny. ‘Fifteen years, for one thing. Anyway, Esme is determined and I'm in no mood to stop her.'

‘So what you're saying,' said Magrat, icily, ‘is that this “not meddling” thing is like taking a vow not to swim. You'll absolutely never break it unless of course you happen to find yourself in the water?'

‘Better than drowning,' Nanny said.

She reached up to the mantelpiece and took down a clay pipe that was like a small tar pit. She lit it with a spill from the remains of the fire, while Greebo watched her carefully from his cushion.

Magrat idly lifted the hood from the ball and glared at it.

‘I think,' she said, ‘that I will never really understand about witchcraft. Just when I think I've got a grip on it, it changes.'

‘We're all just people.' Nanny blew a cloud of blue smoke at the chimney. ‘Everyone's just people.'

‘Can I borrow the crystal?' said Magrat suddenly.

‘Feel free,' said Nanny. She grinned at Magrat's back. ‘Had a row with your young man?' she said.

‘I really don't know what you're talking about.'

‘Haven't seen him around for weeks.'

‘Oh, the duke sent him to—' Magrat stopped, and went on –‘sent him away for something or other. Not that it bothers me at all, either way.'

‘So I see. Take the ball, by all means.'

Magrat was glad to get back home. No-one was about on the moors at night anyway, but over the last couple of months things had definitely been getting worse. On top of the general suspicion of witches, it was dawning on the few people in Lancre who had any dealings with the outside world that a) either more things had been happening than they had heard about before or b) time was out of joint. It wasn't easy to prove,
²⁰
but the few traders who came along the mountain tracks after the winter seemed to be rather older than they should have been. Unexplained happenings were always more or less expected in the Ramtops because of the high magical potential, but
several years disappearing overnight was a bit of a first.

She locked the door, fastened the shutters, and carefully laid the green glass globe on the kitchen table.

She concentrated . . .

The Fool dozed under the tarpaulins of the river barge, heading up the Ankh at a steady two miles an hour. It wasn't an exciting method of transport but it got you there eventually.

He looked safe enough, but he was tossing and turning in his sleep.

Magrat wondered what it was like, spending your whole life doing something you didn't want to do. Like being dead, she considered, only worse, the reason being, you were alive to suffer it.

She considered the Fool to be weak, badly led and sorely in need of some backbone. And she was longing for him to get back, so she could look forward to never seeing him again.

It was a long, hot summer.

They didn't rush things. There was a lot of country between Ankh-Morpork and the Ramtops. It was, Hwel had to admit, fun. It wasn't a word dwarfs were generally at home with.

Please Yourself
went over well. It always did. The apprentices excelled themselves. They forgot lines, and played jokes; in Sto Lat the whole third act of
Gretalina and Mellias
was performed against the backdrop for the second act of
The Mage Wars
, but no-one seemed to notice that the greatest love scene in history was played on a set depicting a tidal wave sweeping across
a continent. That was possibly because Tomjon was playing Gretalina. The effect was so disconcertingly riveting that Hwel made him swap roles for the next house, if you could apply the term to a barn hired for the day, and the effect still had more rivets than a suit of plate armour, including the helmet, and even though Gretalina in this case was now young Wimsloe, who was a bit simple and tended to stutter and whose spots might eventually clear up.

The following day, in some nameless village in the middle of an endless sea of cabbages, he let Tomjon play Old Miskin in
Please Yourself
, a role that Vitoller always excelled in. You couldn't let anyone play it who was under the age of forty, not unless you wanted an Old Miskin with a cushion up his jerkin and greasepaint wrinkles.

Hwel didn't consider himself old. His father had still been digging three tons of ore a day at the age of two hundred.

Now
he felt old. He watched Tomjon hobble off the stage, and for a fleeting instant knew what it was to be a fat old man, pickled in wine, fighting old wars that no-one cared about any more, hanging grimly on to the precipice of late middle-age for fear of dropping off into antiquity, but only with one hand, because with the other he was raising two fingers at Death. Of course, he'd known that when he wrote the part. But he hadn't
known
it.

The same magic didn't seem to infuse the new play. They tried it a few times, just to see how it went. The audience watched attentively, and went home. They didn't even bother to throw anything. It wasn't that they thought it was bad. They didn't think it was anything.

But all the right ingredients were there, weren't they? Tradition was full of people giving evil rulers a well-justified seeing to. Witches were always a draw. The apparition of Death was particularly good, with some lovely lines. Mix them all together . . . and they seemed to cancel out, become a mere humdrum way of filling the stage for a couple of hours.

Late at night, when the cast was asleep, Hwel would sit up in one of the carts and feverishly rewrite. He rearranged scenes, cut lines,
added
lines, introduced a clown, included another fight, and tuned up the special effects. It didn't seem to have any effect. The play was like some marvellous intricate painting, a feast of impressions close to, a mere blur from the distance.

When the inspirations were sleeting fast he even tried changing the style. In the morning the early risers grew accustomed to finding discarded experiments decorating the grass around the carts, like extremely literate mushrooms.

Tomjon kept one of the strangest:

1ST
W
ITCHE
: He's late.

(Pause)

2ND
W
ITCHE
: He said he would come.

(Pause)

3
RD
W
ITCHE
: He said he would come but he hasn't. This is my last newt. I saved it for him. And he hasn't come.

(Pause)

‘I think,' said Tomjon, later, ‘you ought to slow down a bit. You've done what was ordered. No-one said it had to
sparkle.
'

‘It could, you know. If I could just get it right.'

‘You're absolutely sure about the ghost, are you?' said Tomjon. The way he threw the line away made it clear that he wasn't.

‘There's nothing wrong with the ghost,' snapped Hwel. ‘The scene with the ghost is the best I've done.'

‘I was just wondering if this is the right play for it, that's all.'

‘The ghost stays. Now let's get on, boy.'

Two days later, with the Ramtops a blue and white wall that was beginning to dominate the Hubward horizon, the company was attacked. There wasn't much drama; they had just manhandled the lattys across a ford and were resting in the shade of a grove of trees, which suddenly fruited robbers.

Hwel looked along the line of half a dozen stained and rusty blades. Their owners seemed slightly uncertain about what to do next.

‘We've got a receipt somewhere—' he began.

Tomjon nudged him. ‘These don't look like Guild thieves,' he hissed. ‘They definitely look freelance to me.'

It would be nice to say that the leader of the robbers was a black-bearded, swaggering brute, with a red headscarf and one gold earring and a chin you could clean pots with. Actually it would be practically compulsory. And, in fact, this was so. Hwel thought the wooden leg was overdoing it, but the man had obviously studied the role.

‘Well now,' said the bandit chief. ‘What have we here, and do they have any money?'

‘We're actors,' said Tomjon.

‘That ought to answer both questions,' said Hwel.

‘And none of your repartee,' said the bandit. ‘I've been to the city, I have. I know repartee when I see it and—' he half turned to his followers, raising an eyebrow to indicate that the next remark was going to be witty –‘if you're not careful I can make a few
cutting
remarks of my own.'

There was dead silence behind him until he made an impatient gesture with his cutlass.

‘All right,' he said, against a chorus of uncertain laughter. ‘We'll just take any loose change, valuables, food and clothing you might be having.'

‘Could I say something?' said Tomjon.

The company backed away from him. Hwel smiled at his own feet.

‘You're going to beg for mercy, are you?' said the bandit.

‘That's right.'

Hwel thrust his hands deep into his pockets and looked up at the sky, whistling under his breath and trying not to break into a maniac grin. He was aware that the other actors were also looking expectantly at Tomjon.

He's going to give them the mercy speech from
The Troll's Tale
, he thought . . .

‘The point I'd just like to make is that—' said Tomjon, and his stance changed subtly, his voice became deeper, his right hand flung out dramatically – ‘“The worth of man lies not in feats of arms, Or the fiery hunger o' the ravening—”'

It's going to be like when that man tried to rob us back in Sto Lat, Hwel thought. If they end up giving us their swords, what the hell can we do with them? And it's so embarrassing when they start crying.

It was at this moment that the world around him
took a green tint and he thought he could make out, right on the cusp of hearing, other voices.

‘
There's men with swords, Granny!
'

‘—rend with glowing blades the marvel of the world—' Tomjon said, and the voices at the edge of imagination said, ‘
No king of
mine
is going to beg anything off anyone. Give me that milk jug, Magrat.
'

‘—the heart of compassion, the kiss—'

‘
That was a present from my aunt.
'

‘—this jewel of jewels, this crown of crowns.'

There was silence. One or two of the bandits were weeping silently into their hands.

Their chief said, ‘Is that it?'

For the first time in his life Tomjon looked non-plussed.

‘Well, yes,' he said. ‘Er. Would you like me to repeat it?'

‘It was a good speech,' the bandit conceded. ‘But I don't see what it's got to do with me. I'm a practical man. Hand over your valuables.'

His sword came up until it was level with Tomjon's throat.

‘And all the rest of you shouldn't be standing there like idiots,' he added. ‘Come on. Or the boy gets it.'

Wimsloe the apprentice raised a cautious hand.

‘What?' said the bandit.

‘A-are you s-sure you listened carefully, sir?'

‘I won't tell you again! Either I hear the clink of coins, or you hear a gurgle!'

In fact what they all heard was a whistling noise, high in the air, and the crash as a milk jug, its sides frosted with the ice of altitude, dropped out of the sky on to the spike atop the chief's helmet.

The remaining bandits took one look at the results, and fled.

The actors stared down at the recumbent bandit. Hwel prodded a lump of frozen milk with his boot.

‘Well, well,' he said weakly.

‘He didn't take any notice!' whispered Tomjon.

‘A born critic,' said the dwarf. It was a blue and white jug. Funny how little details stood out at a time like this. It had been smashed several times in the past, he could see, because the pieces had been carefully glued together again. Someone had really loved that jug.

‘What we're dealing with here,' he said, rallying some shreds of logic, ‘is a freak whirlwind. Obviously.'