Maskerade d-18 Read online

  The force of the words knocked even Christine back. “Oh, dear!! Did they want you to do something?!”

  “They want me to be something. But I'm not going to!”

  Christine stared at her. And then, automatically, forgot everything she'd just heard.

  “Come on,” she said, “let's have a look around!!”

  Nanny Ogg balanced on a chair and took down an oblong wrapped in paper.

  Granny watched sternly with her arms folded.

  “Thing is,” Nanny babbled, under the laser glare, “my late husband, I remember him once sayin' to me, after dinner, he said, "You know, mother, it'd be a real shame if all the stuff you know just passed away when you did. Why don't you write some of it down?" So I scribbled the odd one, when I had a moment, and then I thought it'd be nice to have it all properly done so I sent it off to the Almanack people in Ankh‑Morpork and they hardly charged me anything and a little while ago they sent me this, I think it's a very good job, it's amazing how they get all the letters so neat—”

  “You done a book,” said Granny.

  “Only cookery,” said Nanny Ogg meekly, as one might plead a first offence.

  “What do you know about it? You hardly ever do any cooking,” said Granny.

  “I do specialities,” said Nanny.

  Granny looked at the offending volume.

  “ "The Joye of Snacks," ” she read out loud. “ "Bye A Lancre Witch." Hah! Why dint you put your own name on it, eh? Books've got to have a name on 'em so's everyone knows who's guilty.”

  “It's my gnome de plum,” said Nanny. “Mr Goatberger the Almanack man said it'd make it sound more mysterious.”

  Granny cast her gimlet gaze to the bottom of the crowded cover, where it said, in very small lettering, 'CXX viith Printyng. More Than Twenty Thoufand Solde! One half dollar.'

  “You sent them some money to get it all printed?” she said.

  “Only a couple of dollars,” said Nanny. “Damn' good job they made of it, too. And then they sent the money back afterwards, only they got it wrong and sent three dollars extra.”

  Granny Weatherwax was grudgingly literate but keenly numerate. She assumed that anything written down was probably a lie, and that applied to numbers too. Numbers were used only by people who wanted to put one over on you.

  Her lips moved silently as she thought about numbers.

  “Oh,” she said, quietly. “And that was it, was it? You never wrote to him again?”

  “Not on your life. Three dollars, mind. I dint want him saying he wanted 'em back.”

  “I can see that,” said Granny, still dwelling in the world of numbers. She wondered how much it cost to do a book. It couldn't be a lot: they had sort of printing mills to do the actual work.

  “After all, there's a lot you can do with three dollars,” said Nanny.

  “Right enough,” said Granny. “You ain't got a pencil about you, have you? You being a literary type and all?”

  “I got a slate,” said Nanny.

  “Pass it over, then.”

  “I bin keeping it by me in case I wake up in the night and I get an idea for a recipe, see,” said Nanny.

  “Good,” said Granny vaguely. The slate pencil squeaked across the grey tablet. The paper must cost something. And you'd probably have to tip someone a couple of pennies to sell it…Angular figures danced from column to column.

  “I'll make another cup of tea, shall I?” said Nanny, relieved that the conversation appeared to be coming to a peaceful end.

  “Hmm?” said Granny. She stared at the result and drew two lines under it. “But you enjoyed it, did you?” she called out. “The writin'?”

  Nanny Ogg poked her head around the scullery door. “Oh, yes. The money dint matter,” she said.

  “You've never been very good at numbers, have you?” said Granny. Now she drew a circle around the final figure.

  “Oh, you know me, Esme,” said Nanny cheerfully. “I couldn't subtract a fart from a plate of beans.”

  “That's good, 'cos I reckon this Master Goatberger owes you a bit more than you got, if there's any justice in the world,” said Granny.

  “Money ain't everything, Esme. What I say is, if you've got your health—”

  “I reckon, if there's any justice, it's about four or five thousand dollars,” said Granny quietly.

  There was a crash from the scullery.

  “So it's a good job the money don't matter,” Granny Weatherwax went on. “It'd be a terrible thing otherwise. All that money, matterin'.”

  Nanny Ogg's white face appeared around the edge of the door. “He never!”

  “Could be a bit more,” said Granny.

  “It never!”

  “You just adds up and divides and that.”

  Nanny Ogg stared in horrified fascination at her own fingers.

  “But that's a—” She stopped. The only word she could think of was 'fortune' and that wasn't adequate. Witches didn't operate in a cash economy. The whole of the Ramtops, by and large, got by without the complications of capital. Fifty dollars was a fortune. A hundred dollars was a, was a, was… well, it was two fortunes, that was what it was.

  “It's a lot of money,” she said weakly. “What couldn't I do with money like that?”

  “Dunno,” said Granny Weatherwax. “What did you do with the three dollars?”

  “Got it in a tin up the chimney,” said Nanny Ogg.

  Granny nodded approvingly. This was the kind of good fiscal practice she liked to see.

  “Beats me why peopled fall over themselves to read a cookery book, though,” she added. “I mean, it's not the sort of thing that—”

  The room fell silent. Nanny Ogg shuffled her boots.

  Granny said, in a voice laden with a suspicion that was all the worse because it wasn't yet quite sure what it was suspicious of “It is a cookery book, isn't it?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Nanny hurriedly, avoiding Granny's gaze. “Yes. Recipes and that. Yes.”

  Granny glared at her. “Just recipes?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. And some… cookery anecdotes, yes.”

  Granny went on glaring.

  Nanny gave in.

  “Er… look under Famous Carrot and Oyster Pie,” she said. “Page 25.”

  Granny turned the pages. Her lips moved silently. Then: “I see. Anything else?”

  “Er… Cinnamon and Marshmallow Fingers…page 17…”

  Granny looked it up.

  “And?”

  “Er…Celery Astonishment… page 10.”

  Granny looked that up, too.

  “Can't say it astonished me,” she said. “And…?”

  “Er… well, more or less all of Humorous Puddings and Cake Decoration. That's all of Chapter Six. I done illustrations for that.”

  Granny turned to Chapter Six. She had to turn the book around a couple of times.

  “What one you looking at?” said Nanny Ogg, because an author is always keen to get feedback.

  “Strawberry Wobbler,” said Granny.

  “Ah. That one always gets a laugh.”

  It did not appear to be obtaining one from Granny. She carefully closed the book.

  “Gytha,” she said, “this is me askin' you this. Is there any page in this book, is there any single recipe, which does not in some way relate to… goingson?”

  Nanny Ogg, her face red as her apples, seemed to give this some lengthy consideration.

  “Porridge,” she said, eventually.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Er. No, I tell a lie, it's got my special honey mixture in it.”

  Granny turned a page.

  “What about this one? Maids of Honour?”

  “Weeelll, they starts out as Maids of Honour,” said Nanny, fidgeting with her feet, “but they ends up Tarts.”

  Granny looked at the front cover again. The Joye of Snacks.

  “An' you actually set out to—”

  “It just sort of turned out that way, really.”


  Granny Weatherwax was not a jouster in the lists of love but, as an intelligent onlooker, she knew how the game was played. No wonder the book had sold like hot cakes. Half the recipes told you how to make them. It was surprising the pages hadn't singed.

  And it was by 'A Lancre Witch'. The world was, Granny Weatherwax modestly admitted, well aware of who the witch of Lancre was; viz, it was her.

  “Gytha Ogg,” she said.

  “Yes, Esme?”

  “Gytha Ogg, you look me in the eye.”

  “Sorry, Esme.”

  “ "A Lancre Witch", it says here.”

  “I never thought, Esme.”

  “So you'll go and see Mr Goatberger and have this stopped, right? I don't want people lookin' at me and thinkin' about the Bananana Soup Surprise. I don't even believe the Bananana Soup Surprise. And I ain't relishin' going down the street and hearin' people makin' cracks about bananas.”

  “Yes, Esme.”

  “And I'll come with you to make sure you do.”

  “Yes, Esme.”

  “And we'll talk to the man about your money.”

  “Yes, Esme.”

  “And we might just drop in on young Agnes to make sure she's all right.”

  “Yes, Esme.”

  “But we'll do it diplomatic like. We don't want people thinkin' we're pokin' our noses in.”

  “Yes, Esme.”

  “No one could say I interfere where I'm not wanted. You won't find anyone callin' me a busybody.”

  “Yes, Esme.”

  “That was, "Yes, Esme, you won't find anyone callin' you a busybody", was it?”

  “Oh, yes, Esme.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yes, Esme.”

  “Good.”

  Granny looked out at the dull grey sky and the dying leaves and felt, amazingly enough, her sap rising. A day ago the future had looked aching and desolate, and now it looked full of surprises and terror and bad things happening to people…

  If she had anything to do with it, anyway.

  In the scullery, Nanny Ogg grinned to herself.

  Agnes had known a little bit about the theatre. A travelling company came to Lancre sometimes. Their stage was about twice the size of a door, and 'backstage' consisted of a bit of sacking behind which was usually a man trying to change trousers and wigs at the same time and another man, dressed as a king, having a surreptitious smoke.

  The Opera House was almost as big as the Patrician's palace, and far more palatial. It covered three acres. There was stabling for twenty horses and two elephants in the cellar; Agnes spent some time there, because the elephants were reassuringly larger than her.

  There were rooms behind the stage so big that entire sets were stored there. There was a whole ballet school somewhere in the building. Some of the girls were on stage now, ugly in woolly jumpers, going through a routine.

  The inside of the Opera House — at least, the backstage inside — put Agnes strongly in mind of the clock her brother had taken apart to find the tick. It was hardly a building. It was more like a machine. Sets and curtains and ropes hung in the darkness like dreadful things in a forgotten cellar. The stage was only a small part of the place, a little rectangle of light in a huge, complicated darkness full of significant machinery…

  A piece of dust floated down from the blackness high above. She brushed it off.

  “I thought I heard someone up there,” she said.

  “It's probably the Ghost!!” said Christine. “We've got one, you know! Oh, I said we!! Isn't this exciting?!”

  “A man with his face covered by a white mask,” said Agnes.

  “Oh?! You've heard about him, then?!”

  “What? Who?”

  “The Ghost!!”

  Blast, thought Agnes. It was always ready to catch her out. Just when she thought she'd put all that behind her. She'd know things without quite knowing why. It upset people. It certainly upset her.

  “Oh, I… suppose someone must have told me…” she mumbled.

  “He moves around the Opera House invisibly, they say!! One moment he'll be in the Gods, next moment he'll be backstage somewhere!! No one knows how he does it!!”

  “Really?”

  “They say he watches every performance!! That's why they never sell tickets for Box Eight, didn't you know?!”

  “Box Eight?” said Agnes. “What's a Box?”

  “Boxes! You know? That's where you get the best people?! Look, I shall show you!”

  Christine marched to the front of the stage and waved a hand grandly at the empty auditorium.

  “The Boxes!” she said. “Over there! And right up there, the Gods!”

  Her voice bounced back from the distant wall.

  “Aren't the best people in the Gods? It sounds—”

  “Oh, no! The best people will be in Boxes! Or possibly in the Stalls!”

  Agnes pointed.

  “Who's down there? They must get a good view—”

  “Don't be silly!! That's the Pit!! That's for the musicians!!”

  “Well, that makes sense, anyway. Er. Which one's Box Eight?”

  “I don't know! But they say if ever they sell seats in Box Eight there'll be a dreadful tragedy!! Isn't that romantic?!”

  For some reason Agnes's practical eye was drawn to the huge chandelier that hung over the auditorium like a fantastic sea monster. Its thick rope disappeared into the darkness near the ceiling.

  The glass chimes tinkled.

  Another flare of that certain power which Agnes did her best to suppress at every turn flashed a treacherous image across her mind.

  “That looks like an accident waiting to happen if ever I saw one,” she mumbled.

  “I'm sure it's perfectly safe!!” trilled Christine. “I'm sure they wouldn't allow—”

  A chord rolled out, shaking the stage. The chandelier tinkled, and more dust came down.

  “What was that?” said Agnes.

  “It was the organ!! It's so big it's behind the stage!! Come on, let's go and see!!”

  Other members of the staff were hurrying towards the organ. There was an overturned bucket nearby, and a spreading pool of green paint.

  A carpenter reached past Agnes and picked up an envelope that was lying on the organ seat.

  “It's for the boss,” he said.

  “When it's my mail, the postman usually just knocks,” said a ballerina, and giggled.

  Agnes looked up. Ropes swung lazily in the musty darkness. For a moment she thought she saw a flash of white, and then it was gone.

  There was a shape, just visible, tangled in the ropes.

  Something wet and sticky dripped down and splashed on the keyboard.

  People were already screaming when Agnes reached past, dipped her finger in the growing puddle, and sniffed.

  “It's blood!” said the carpenter.

  “It's blood, isn't it?” said a musician.

  “Blood!!” screamed Christine. “Blood!!”

  It was Agnes's terrible fate to keep her head in a crisis. She sniffed her finger again.

  “It's turpentine,” said Agnes. “Er. Sorry. Is that wrong?

  Up in the tangle of ropes, the figure moaned.

  “Shouldn't we get him down?” she added.

  Cando Cutoff was a humble woodcutter. He wasn't humble because he was a woodcutter. He would still have been quite humble if he'd owned five logging mills. He was just naturally humble.

  And he was unpretentiously stacking some logs at the point where the Lancre road met the main mountain road when he saw a farm cart rumble to a halt and unload two elderly ladies in black. Both carried a broomstick in one hand and a sack in the other.

  They were arguing. It was not a raised‑voice argument, but a chronic wrangle that had clearly been going on for some time and was set in for the rest of the decade.

  “It's all very well for you, but it's my three dollars so I don't see why I can't say how we go.”

  “I likes flying.”

/>   “And I'm telling you it's too draughty on broomsticks this time of year, Esme. The breeze gets into places I wouldn't dream of talking about.”

  “Really? Can't imagine where those'd be, then.”

  “Oh, Esme!”

  “Don't "Oh, Esme" me. It weren't me that come up with the Amusing Wedding Trifle with the Special Sponge Fingers.”

  “Anyway, Greebo don't like it on the broomstick. He's got a delicate stomach.”

  Cutoff noticed that one of the sacks was moving in a lazy way.

  “Gytha, I've seen him eat half a skunk, so don't tell me about his delicate stomach,” said Granny, who disliked cats on principle. “Anyway… he's been doing It again.”

  Nanny Ogg waved her hands airily.

  “Oh, he only does It sometimes, when he's really in a corner,” she said.

  “He did It in ole Mrs Grope's henhouse last week. She went into see what all the ruckus was, and he did It right in front of her. She had to have a liedown.”

  “He was probably more frightened than she was,” said Nanny defensively.

  “That's what comes of getting strange ideas in foreign parts,” said Granny. “Now you've got a cat who— Yes, what is it?”

  Cutoff had meekly approached them and was hovering in the kind of half‑crouch of someone trying to be noticed while also not wanting to intrude.

  “Are you ladies waiting for the stagecoach?”

  “Yes,” said the taller of the ladies.

  “Um, I'm afraid the next coach doesn't stop here. It doesn't stop until Creel Springs.”

  They gave him a couple of polite stares.

  “Thank you,” said the tall one. She turned to her companion.

  “It gave her a nasty shock, anyway. I dread to think what he'll learn this time.”

  “He pines when I'm gone. He won't take food from anyone else.”

  “Only 'cos they try to poison him, and no wonder.”

  Cutoff shook his head sadly and wandered back to his log pile.

  The coach turned up five minutes later, coming around the corner at speed. It drew level with the women–

  — and stopped. That is, the horses tried to stand still and the wheels locked.