Wyrd Sisters (7 page)

‘I expect she said some magic words, did she? I've heard about witches,' said the duke, who had spent the night before reading, until his bandaged hands shook too much, some of the more excitable works on the subject.
³
‘I imagine she offered you visions of unearthly delight? Did she show you—' the duke shuddered – ‘dark fascinations and forbidden raptures, the like of which mortal men should not even think of, and demonic secrets that took you to the depths of man's desires?'

The duke sat down and fanned himself with his handkerchief.

‘Are you all right, sir?' said the sergeant.

‘What? Oh, perfectly, perfectly.'

‘Only you've gone all red.'

‘Don't change the subject, man,' snapped the duke,
pulling himself together a bit. ‘Admit it – she offered you hedonistic and licentious pleasures known only to those who dabble in the carnal arts, didn't she?'

The sergeant stood to attention and stared straight ahead.

‘No, sir,' he said, in the manner of one speaking the truth come what may. ‘She offered me a bun.'

‘A bun?'

‘Yes, sir. It had currants in it.'

Felmet sat absolutely still while he fought for internal peace. Finally, all he could manage was, ‘And what did your men do about this?'

‘They had a bun too, sir. All except young Roger, who isn't allowed fruit, sir, on account of his trouble.'

The duke sagged back on the window seat and put his hand over his eyes. I was born to rule down on the plains, he thought, where it's all flat and there isn't all this weather and everything and there are people who don't appear to be made of dough. He's going to tell me what this Roger had.

‘He had a biscuit, sir.'

The duke stared out at the trees. He was angry. He was extremely angry. But twenty years of marriage to Lady Felmet had taught him not simply to control his emotions but to control his instincts as well, and not so much as the twitching of a muscle indicated the workings of his mind. Besides, arising out of the black depths of his head was an emotion that, hitherto, he had little time for. Curiosity was flashing a fin.

The duke had managed quite well for fifty years without finding a use for curiosity. It was not a trait much encouraged in aristocrats. He had found certainty was a much better bet. However, it occurred to him that for once curiosity might have its uses.

The sergeant was standing in the middle of the floor with the stolid air of one who is awaiting a word of command, and who is quite prepared so to wait until continental drift budges him from his post. He had been in the undemanding service of the kings of Lancre for many years, and it showed. His body was standing to attention. Despite all his efforts his stomach stood at ease.

The duke's gaze fell on the Fool, who was sitting on his stool by the throne. The hunched figure looked up, embarrassed, and gave his bells a half-hearted shake.

The duke reached a decision. The way to progress, he'd found, was to find weak spots. He tried to shut away the thought that these included such things as a king's kidneys at the top of a dark stairway, and concentrated on the matter in hand.

. . . hand. He'd scrubbed and scrubbed, but it seemed to have no effect. Eventually he'd gone down to the dungeons and borrowed one of the torturer's wire brushes, and scrubbed and scrubbed with that, too. That had no effect, either. It made it worse. The harder he scrubbed, the more blood there was. He was afraid he might go mad . . .

He wrestled the thought to the back of his mind. Weak spots. That was it. The Fool looked all weak spot.

‘You may go, sergeant.'

‘Sir,' said the sergeant, and marched out stiffly.

‘Fool?'

‘Marry, sir—' said the Fool nervously, and gave his hated mandolin a quick strum.

The duke sat down on the throne.

‘I am already extremely married,' he said. ‘Advise me, my Fool.'

‘I' faith, nuncle—' said the Fool.

‘Nor am I thy nuncle. I feel sure I would have remembered,' said Lord Felmet, leaning down until the prow of his nose was a few inches from the Fool's stricken face. ‘If you preface your next remark with nuncle, i'faith or marry, it will go hard with you.'

The Fool moved his lips silently, and then said, ‘How do you feel about Prithee?'

The duke knew when to allow some slack. ‘Prithee I can live with,' he said. ‘So can you. But no capering.' He grinned encouragingly. ‘How long have you been a Fool, boy?'

‘Prithee, sirrah—'

‘The sirrah,' said the duke, holding up a hand, ‘on the whole, I think not.'

‘Prithee, sirra – sir,' said the Fool, and swallowed nervously. ‘All my life, sir. Seventeen years under the bladder, man and boy. And my father before me. And my nuncle at the same time as him. And my grandad before them. And his—'

‘Your whole family have been Fools?'

‘Family tradition, sir,' said the Fool. ‘Prithee, I mean.'

The duke smiled again, and the Fool was too worried to notice how many teeth it contained.

‘You come from these parts, don't you?' said the duke.

‘Ma – Yes, sir.'

‘So you would know all about the native beliefs and so on?'

‘I suppose so, sir. Prithee.'

‘Good. Where do you sleep, my Fool?'

‘In the stables, sir.'

‘From now on you may sleep in the corridor outside my room,' said the duke beneficently.

‘Gosh!'

‘And now,' said the duke, his voice dripping across the Fool like treacle over a pudding, ‘tell me about witches . . .'

That night the Fool slept on good royal flagstones in the whistling corridor above the Great Hall instead of the warm stuffy straw of the stables.

‘This is foolish,' he told himself. ‘Marry, but is it foolish
enough
?'

He dozed off fitfully, into some sort of dream where a vague figure kept trying to attract his attention, and was only dimly aware of the voices of Lord and Lady Felmet on the other side of the door.

‘It's certainly a lot less draughty,' said the duchess grudgingly.

The duke sat back in the armchair and smiled at his wife.

‘Well?' she demanded. ‘Where are the witches?'

‘The chamberlain would appear to be right, beloved. The witches seem to have the local people in thrall. The sergeant of the guard came back empty-handed.' Handed . . . he came down heavily on the importunate thought.

‘You must have him executed,' she said promptly. ‘To make an example to the others.'

‘A course of action, my dear, which ultimately results in us ordering the last soldier to cut his own throat as an example to himself. By the way,' he added mildly, ‘there would appear to be somewhat fewer servants around the place. You know I would not normally interfere—'

‘Then don't,' she snapped. ‘Housekeeping is under my control. I cannot abide
slackness
.'

‘I'm sure you know best, but—'

‘What of these witches? Will you stand idly by and let trouble seed for the future? Will you let these witches defy you? What of the crown?'

The duke shrugged. ‘No doubt it ended in the river,' he said.

‘And the child? He was
given
to the witches? Do they do human sacrifice?'

‘It would appear not,' said the duke. The duchess looked vaguely disappointed.

‘These witches,' said the duke. ‘Apparently, they seem to cast a spell on people.'

‘Well, obviously—'

‘Not like a magic spell. They seem to be respected. They do medicine and so on. It's rather strange. The mountain people seem to be afraid of them and proud of them at the same time. It might be a little difficult to move against them.'

‘I could come to believe,' said the duchess darkly, ‘that they have cast a glamour over you as well.'

In fact the duke
was
intrigued. Power was always darkly fascinating, which was why he had married the duchess in the first place. He stared fixedly at the fire.

‘In fact,' said the duchess, who recognized the malign smile, ‘you like it, don't you? The thought of the danger. I remember when we were married; all that business with the knotted rope—'

She snapped her fingers in front of the duke's glazed eyes. He sat up.

‘Not at all!' he shouted.

‘Then what will you do?'

‘Wait.'

‘
Wait?
'

‘Wait, and consider. Patience is a virtue.'

The duke sat back. The smile he smiled could have spent a million years sitting on a rock. And then, just below one eye, he started to twitch.

Blood was oozing between the bandages on his hand.

Once again the full moon rode the clouds.

Granny Weatherwax milked and fed the goats, banked the fire, put a cloth over the mirror and pulled her broomstick out from behind the door. She went out, locked the back door behind her, and hung the key on its nail in the privy.

This was quite sufficient. Only once, in the entire history of witchery in the Ramtops, had a thief broken into a witch's cottage. The witch concerned visited the most terrible punishment on him.
⁴

Granny sat on the broom and muttered a few words, but without much conviction. After a further couple of tries she got off, fiddled with the binding, and had another go. There was a suspicion of glitter from one end of the stick, which quickly died away.

‘Drat,' she said, under her breath.

She looked around carefully, in case anyone was watching. In fact it was only a hunting badger who, hearing the thumping of running feet, poked its head out from the bushes and saw Granny hurtling down
the path with the broomstick held stiff-armed beside her. At last the magic caught, and she managed to vault clumsily on to it before it trundled into the night sky as gracefully as a duck with one wing missing.

From above the trees came a muffled curse against all dwarfish mechanics.

Most witches preferred to live in isolated cottages with the traditional curly chimneys and weed-grown thatch. Granny Weatherwax approved of this; it was no good being a witch unless you let people
know
.

Nanny Ogg didn't care much about what people knew and even less for what they thought, and lived in a new, knick-knack crammed cottage in the middle of Lancre town itself and at the heart of her own private empire. Various daughters and daughters-in-law came in to cook and clean on a sort of rota. Every flat surface was stuffed with ornaments brought back by far-travelling members of the family. Sons and grandsons kept the logpile stacked, the roof shingled, the chimney swept; the drinks cupboard was always full, the pouch by her rocking chair always stuffed with tobacco. Above the hearth was a huge pokerwork sign saying ‘Mother'. No tyrant in the whole history of the world had ever achieved a domination so complete.

Nanny Ogg also kept a cat, a huge one-eyed grey tom called Greebo who divided his time between sleeping, eating and fathering the most enormous incestuous feline tribe. He opened his eye like a yellow window into Hell when he heard Granny's broomstick land awkwardly on the back lawn. With the instinct of his kind he recognized Granny as an inveterate cat-hater and oozed gently under a chair.

Magrat was already seated primly by the fire.

It is one of the few unbendable rules of magic that its practitioners cannot change their own appearance for any length of time. Their bodies develop a kind of morphic inertia and gradually return to their original shape. But Magrat tried. Every morning her hair was long, thick and blond, but by the evening it had always returned to its normal worried frizz. To ameliorate the effect she had tried to plait violets and cowslips in it. The result was not all she had hoped. It gave the impression that a window box had fallen on her head.

‘Good evening,' said Granny.

‘Well met by moonlight,' said Magrat politely. ‘Merry meet. A star shines on—'

‘Wotcha,' said Nanny Ogg. Magrat winced.

Granny sat down and started removing the pins that nailed her tall hat to her bun. Finally the sight of Magrat dawned on her.

‘Magrat!'

The young witch jumped, and clamped her knuckly hands to the virtuous frontage of her gown.

‘Yes?' she quavered.

‘What have you got on your lap?'

‘It's my familiar,' she said defensively.

‘What happened to that toad you had?'

‘It wandered off,' muttered Magrat. ‘Anyway, it wasn't very good.'

Granny sighed. Magrat's desperate search for a reliable familiar had been going on for some time, and despite the love and attention she lavished on them they all seemed to have some terrible flaw, such as a tendency to bite, get trodden on or, in extreme cases, metamorphose.

‘That makes fifteen this year,' said Granny. ‘Not counting the horse. What's this one?'

‘It's a rock,' chuckled Nanny Ogg.

‘Well, at least it should last,' said Granny.

The rock extended a head and gave her a look of mild amusement.

‘It's a tortoyse,' said Magrat. ‘I bought it down in Sheepridge market. It's incredibly old and knows many secrets, the man said.'

‘I know that man,' said Granny. ‘He's the one who sells goldfish that tarnish after a day or two.'

‘Anyway, I shall call him Lightfoot,' said Magrat, her voice warm with defiance. ‘I can if I want.'

‘Yes, yes, all right, I'm sure,' said Granny. ‘Anyway, how goes it, sisters? It is two months since last we met.'

‘It should be every new moon,' said Magrat sternly. ‘Regular.'

‘It was our Grame's youngest's wedding,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘Couldn't miss it.'

‘And I was up all night with a sick goat,' said Granny Weatherwax promptly.

‘Yes, well,' said Magrat doubtfully. She rummaged in her bag. ‘Anyway, if we're going to start, we'd better light the candles.'