Maskerade d-18 Read online

  “You're so lucky!! You've got such a majestic figure for opera!! And such marvellous hair, the way you pile it up like that!! Black suits you, by the way!!”

  Majestic, thought Agnes. It was a word that would never, ever have occurred to her. And she'd always steered away from white because in white she looked like a washing‑line on a windy day.

  She followed Christine.

  It occurred to Agnes, as she trudged after the girl en route to her new lodgings, that if you spent much time in the same room as Christine you'd need to open a window to stop from drowning in punctuation.

  From somewhere at the back of the stage, quite unheeded, someone watched them go.

  People were generally glad to see Nanny Ogg. She was good at making them feel at home in their own home.

  But she was a witch, and therefore also expert at arriving just after cakes were baked or sausages were made. Nanny Ogg generally travelled with a string bag stuffed up one knee‑length knicker leg — in case, as she put it, someone wants to give me something.

  “So, Mrs Nitt,” she observed, around about the third cake and fourth cup of tea, “how's that daughter of yours? Agnes it is to whom I refer.”

  “Oh, didn't you hear, Mrs Ogg? She's gone off to Ankh-Morpork to be a singer.”

  Nanny Ogg's heart sank.

  “That's nice,” she said. “She has a good singing voice, I remember. Of course, I gave her a few tips. I used to hear her singing in the woods.”

  “It's the air here,” said Mrs Nitt. “She's always had such a good chest.”

  “Yes, indeed. Noted for it. So… er… she's not here, then?”

  “You know our Agnes. She never says much. I think she thought it was a bit dull.”

  “Dull? Lancre?” said Nanny Ogg.

  “That's what I said,” said Mrs Nitt. “I said we get some lovely sunsets up here. And there's the fair every Soul Cake Tuesday, regular.”

  Nanny Ogg thought about Agnes. You needed quite large thoughts to fit all of Agnes in.

  Lancre had always bred strong, capable women. A Lancre farmer needed a wife who'd think nothing of beating a wolf to death with her apron when she went out to get some firewood. And, while kissing initially seemed to have more charms than cookery, a stolid Lancre lad looking for a bride would bear in mind his father's advice that kisses eventually lost their fire but cookery tended to get even better over the years, and direct his courting to those families that clearly showed a tradition of enjoying their food.

  Agnes was, Nanny considered, quite good-looking in an expansive kind of way; she was a fine figure of typical young Lancre womanhood. This meant she was approximately two womanhoods from anywhere else.

  Nanny also recalled her as being rather thoughtful and shy, as if trying to reduce the amount of world she took up.

  But she had shown signs of craft ability. That was only to be expected. There was nothing like that not fitting in feeling to stimulate the old magical nerves; that was why Esme was so good at it. In Agnes's case this had manifested itself in a tendency to wear soppy black lace gloves and pale makeup and call herself Perdita plus an initial from the arse of the alphabet, but Nanny had assumed that would soon burn off when she got some serious witchcraft under her rather strained belt.

  She should have paid more attention to the thing about music. Power found its way out by all sorts of routes…

  Music and magic had a lot in common. They were only two letters apart, for one thing. And you couldn't do both.

  Damn. Nanny had rather been counting on the girl.

  “She used to send off to Ankh‑Morpork for music,” said Mrs Nitt. “See?”

  She handed Nanny several piles of papers.

  Nanny leafed through them. Song‑sheets were common enough in the Ramtops, and a singsong in the parlour was considered the third best thing to do on long dark evenings. But Nanny could see this wasn't ordinary music. It was far too crowded for that.

  “Cosi fan Hita,” she read. “Die Meistersinger von Scrote.”

  “That's foreign,” said Mrs Nitt proudly.

  “It certainly is,” said Nanny.

  Mrs Nitt was looking expectantly at her.

  “What?” said Nanny, and then, “Oh.”

  Mrs Nitt's eyes flickered to her emptied teacup and back again.

  Nanny Ogg sighed and laid the music aside. Occasionally she saw Granny Weatherwax's point. Sometimes people expected too little of witches.

  “Yes, indeedy,” she said, trying to smile. “Let us see what destiny in the form of these dried‑up bits of leaf has in store for us, eh?”

  She set her features in a suitable occult expression and looked down into the cup.

  Which, a second later, smashed into fragments when it hit the floor.

  It was a small room. In fact it was half a small room, since a thin wall had been built across it. Junior members of the chorus ranked rather lower than apprentice scene‑shifters in the opera.

  There was room for a bed, a wardrobe, a dressing-table and, quite out of place, a huge mirror, as big as the door.

  “Impressive, isn't it?!” said Christine. “They tried to take it out but it's built into the wall, apparently!! I'm sure it will be very useful!!”

  Agnes said nothing. Her own half‑room, the other half of this one, didn't have a mirror. She was glad of that. She did not regard mirrors as naturally friendly. It wasn't just the images they showed her. There was something… worrying… about mirrors. She'd always felt that. They seemed to be looking at her. Agnes hated being looked at.

  Christine stepped into the small space in the middle of the floor and twirled. There was something very enjoyable about watching her. It was the sparkle, Agnes thought. Something about Christine suggested sequins.

  “Isn't this nice?!” she said.

  Not liking Christine would be like not liking small fluffy animals. And Christine was just like a small fluffy animal. A rabbit, perhaps. It was certainly impossible for her to get a whole idea into her head in one go. She had to nibble it into manageable bits.

  Agnes glanced at the mirror again. Her reflection stared at her. She could have done with some time to herself right now. Everything had happened so quickly. And this place made her uneasy. Everything would feel a lot better if she could just have some time to herself.

  Christine stopped twirling. “Are you all right?!”

  Agnes nodded.

  “Do tell me about yourself?!”

  “Er… well…” Agnes was gratified, despite herself. “I'm from somewhere up in the mountains you've probably never heard of…”

  She stopped. A light had gone off in Christine's head, and Agnes realized that the question had been asked not because Christine in any way wanted to know the answer but for something to say. She went on: “…and my father is the Emperor of Klatch and my mother is a small tray of raspberry puddings.”

  “That's interesting!” said Christine, who was looking at the mirror. “Do you think my hair looks right?!”

  What Agnes would have said, if Christine had been capable of listening to anything for more than a couple of seconds, was:

  She'd woken up one morning with the horrible realization that she'd been saddled with a lovely personality. It was as simple as that. Oh, and very good hair.

  It wasn't so much the personality, it was the 'but' that people always added when they talked about it. But she's got a lovely personality, they said. It was the lack of choice that rankled. No one had asked her, before she was born, whether she wanted a lovely personality or whether she'd prefer, say, a miserable personality but a body that could take size 9 in dresses. Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin‑deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys.

  She could feel a future trying to land on her.

  She'd caught herself saying 'poot!' and 'dang!' when she wanted to swear, and using pink writing paper.

  She'd got a reputation for being calm and capable in a crisis.

>   Next thing she knew she'd be making shortbread and apple pies as good as her mother's, and then there'd be no hope for her.

  So she'd introduced Perdita. She'd heard somewhere that inside every fat woman was a thin woman trying to get out,[3] so she'd named her Perdita. She was a good repository for all those thoughts that Agnes couldn't think on account of her wonderful personality. Perdita would use black writing paper if she could get away with it, and would be beautifully pale instead of embarrassingly flushed. Perdita wanted to be an interestingly lost soul in plumcoloured lipstick. Just occasionally, though, Agnes thought Perdita was as dumb as she was.

  Was the only alternative the witches? She'd felt their interest in her, in a way she couldn't exactly identify. It was of a piece with knowing when someone was watching you, although she had, in fact, occasionally seen Nanny Ogg watching her in a critical kind of fashion, like someone inspecting a second‑hand horse.

  She knew she did have some talent. Sometimes she knew things that were going to happen, although always in a sufficiently confused way that the knowledge was totally useless until afterwards. And there was her voice. She was aware it wasn't quite natural. She'd always enjoyed singing and, somehow, her voice had just done everything she'd wanted it to do.

  But she'd seen the ways the witches lived. Oh, Nanny Ogg was all right — quite a nice old baggage really. But the others were weird, lying crosswise on the world instead of nicely parallel to it like everyone else… old Mother Dismass who could see into the past and the future but was totally blind in the present, and Millie Hopwood over in Slice, who stuttered and had runny ears, and as for Granny Weatherwax…

  Oh, yes. Finest job in the world? Being a sour old woman with no friends?

  They were always looking for weird people like themselves.

  Well, they could look in vain for Agnes Nitt.

  Fed up with living in Lancre, and fed up with the witches, and above all fed up with being Agnes Nitt, she'd… escaped.

  Nanny Ogg didn't look built for running, but she covered the ground deceptively fast, her great heavy boots kicking up shoals of leaves.

  There was a trumpeting overhead. Another skein of geese passed across the sky, so fast in pursuit of the summer that their wings were hardly moving in the ballistic rush.

  Granny Weatherwax's cottage looked deserted. It had, Nanny felt, a particularly empty feel.

  She scurried around to the back door and burst through, pounded up the stairs, saw the gaunt figure on the bed, reached an instant conclusion, grabbed the pitcher of water from its place on the marble washstand, ran forward…

  A hand shot up and grabbed her wrist.

  “I was having a nap,” said Granny, opening her eyes. “Gytha, I swear I could feel you comin' half a mile away—”

  “We got to make a cup of tea quick!” gasped Nanny, almost sagging with relief.

  Granny Weatherwax was more than bright enough not to ask questions.

  But you couldn't hurry a good cup of tea. Nanny Ogg jiggled from one foot to the other while the fire was pumped up, the small frogs fished out of the water bucket, the water boiled, the dried leaves allowed to seep.

  “I ain't saying nothing,” said Nanny, sitting down at last. “Just pour a cup, that's all.”

  On the whole, witches despised fortune‑telling from tealeaves. Tea‑leaves are not uniquely fortunate in knowing what the future holds. They are really just something for the eyes to rest on while the mind does the work. Practically anything would do. The scum on a puddle, the skin on a custard… anything. Nanny Ogg could see the future in the froth on a beermug. It invariably showed that she was going to enjoy a refreshing drink which she almost certainly was not going to pay for.

  “You recall young Agnes Nitt?” said Nanny as Granny Weatherwax tried to find the milk.

  Granny hesitated.

  “Agnes who calls herself Perditax?”

  “Perdita X,” said Nanny. She at least respected anyone's right to recreate themselves.

  Granny shrugged. “Fat girl. Big hair. Walks with her feet turned out. Sings to herself in the woods. Good voice. Reads books. Says "poot!" instead of swearing. Blushes when anyone looks at her. Wears black lace gloves with the fingers cut out.”

  “You remember we once talked about maybe how possibly she might be… suitable.”

  “Oh, there's a twist in the soul there, you're right,” said Granny. “But… it's an unfortunate name.”

  “Her father's name was Terminal,” said Nanny Ogg reflectively. “There were three sons: Primal, Medial and Terminal. I'm afraid the family's always had a problem with education.”

  “I meant Agnes,” said Granny. “Always puts me in mind of carpet fluff, that name.”

  “Prob'ly that's why she called herself Perdita,” said Nanny.

  “Worse.”

  “Got her fixed in your mind?” said Nanny.

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Good. Now look at them tea‑leaves.”

  Granny looked down.

  There was no particular drama, perhaps because of the way Nanny had built up expectations. But Granny did hiss between her teeth.

  “Well, now. There's a thing,” she said.

  “See it? See it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Like…a skull?”

  “Yep.”

  “And them eyes? I nearly pi‑ I was pretty damn' surprised by them eyes, I can tell you.”

  Granny carefully replaced the cup.

  “Her mam showed me her letters home,” said Nanny. “I brung 'em with me. It's worrying, Esme. She could be facing something bad. She's a Lancre girl. One of ours. Nothing's too much trouble when it's one of your own, I always say.”

  “Tea‑leaves can't tell the future,” said Granny quietly. “Everyone knows that.”

  “Tea‑leaves don't know.”

  “Well, who'd be so daft as to tell anything to a bunch of dried leaves?”

  Nanny Ogg looked down at Agnes's letters home. They were written in the careful rounded script of someone who'd been taught to write as a child by copying letters on a slate, and had never written enough as an adult to change their style. The person writing them had also very conscientiously drawn faint pencil lines on the paper before writing.

  Dear Mam, I hope this finds you as it leaves me. Here I am in Ankh‑Morpork and everything is all right, I have not been ravished yet!! I am staying at 4 Treacle Mine Road, it is alright and…

  Granny tried another.

  Dear Mum, I hope you are well. Everything is fine but, the money runs away like water here. I am doing some singing in taverns but I am not making much so I went to see the Guild of Seamstresses about getting a sewing job and I took along some stitching to show them and you'd be AMAZED, that's all I can say…

  And another…

  Dear Mother, Some good news at last. Next week they're holding auditions at the Opera House…

  “What's opera?” said Granny Weatherwax. “It's like theatre, with singing,” said Nanny Ogg.

  “Hah! Theatre,” said Granny darkly.

  “Our Nev told me about it. It's all singing in foreign languages, he said. He couldn't understand any of it.”

  Granny put down the letters.

  “Yes, but your Nev can't understand a lot of things. What was he doing at this opera theatre, anyway?”

  “Nicking the lead off the roof.” Nanny said this quite happily. It wasn't theft if an Ogg was doing it.

  “Can't tell much from the letters, except that's she's picking up an education,” said Granny. “But it's a long way to—”

  There was a hesitant knock on the door. It was Shawn Ogg, Nanny's youngest son and Lancre's entire civil and public service. Currently he had his postman's badge on; the Lancre postal service consisted of taking the mailbag off the nail where the coach left it and delivering it to the outlying homesteads when he had a moment, although many citizens were in the habit of going down to the sack and rummaging until they found some mail they liked.r />
  He touched his helmet respectfully at Granny Weatherwax.

  “Got a lot of letters, mum,” he said to Nanny Ogg. “Er. They're all addressed to, er, well… er… you'd better have a look, mum.”

  Nanny Ogg took the proffered bundle.

  “ "The Lancre Witch",” she said aloud.

  “That'd be me, then,” said Granny Weatherwax firmly, and took the letters.

  “Ah. Well, I'd better be going…” said Nanny, backing towards the door.

  “Can't imagine why peopled be writing to me,” said Granny, slitting an envelope. “Still, I suppose news gets around.” She focused on the words.

  “ "Dear Witch," ” she read, “ "I would just like to say how much I appreciated the Famous Carrot and Oyster Pie recipe. My husband—" ”

  Nanny Ogg made it halfway down the path before her boots became, suddenly, too heavy to lift.

  “Gytha Ogg, you come back here right now!”

  Agnes tried again. She didn't really know anyone in Ankh-Morpork and she did need someone to talk to, even if they didn't listen.

  “I suppose mainly I came because of the witches,” she said.

  Christine turned, her eyes wide with fascination. So was her mouth. It was like looking at a rather pretty bowling ball.

  “Witches?!” she breathed.

  “Oh, yes,” said Agnes wearily. Yes. People were always fascinated by the idea of witches. They should try living around them, she thought.

  “Do they do spells and ride around on broomsticks?!”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “No wonder you ran away!”

  “What? Oh… no… it's not like that. I mean, they're not bad. It's much… worse than that.”

  “Worse than bad?!”

  “They think they know what's best for everybody.”

  Christine's forehead wrinkled, as it tended to when she was contemplating a problem more complex than “What is your name?”

  “That doesn't sound very ba—”

  “They… mess people around. They think that just because they're right that's the same as good! It's not even as though they do any real magic. It's all fooling people and being clever! They think they can do what they like!”