Lords and Ladies
Page 23

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 ATE'NT 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.