Granny could feel the shape of the future, and it had knives in it.
The sergeant in charge was not happy in his work. He was a Ramtops man, and wasn’t at all certain about how you went about arresting a witch. He was pretty certain, though, that the witch wouldn’t like the idea. He didn’t like the idea of a witch not liking the idea.
The men were Ramtoppers as well. They were following him very closely, ready to duck behind him at the first sign of anything more unexpected than a tree.
Granny’s cottage was a fungoid shape in the mist. Her unruly herb garden seemed to move, even in the still air. It contained plants seen nowhere else in the mountains, their roots and seeds traded across five thousand miles of the Discworld, and the sergeant could swear that one or two blooms turned towards him. He shuddered.
‘What now, Sarge?’
‘We—we spread out,’ he said. ‘Yes. We spread out. That’s what we do.’
They moved carefully through the bracken. The sergeant crouched behind a handy log, and said, ‘Right. Very good. You’ve got the general idea. Now let’s spread out again, and this time we spread out separately.’
The men grumbled a bit, but disappeared into the mist. The sergeant gave them a few minutes to take up positions, then said, ‘Right. Now we—’
He paused.
He wondered whether he dared shout, and decided against it.
He stood up. He removed his helmet, to show respect, and sidled through the damp grass to the back door. He knocked, very gently.
After a wait of several seconds he clamped his helmet back on his head, said, ‘No-one in. Blast’, and started to stride away.
The door opened. It opened very slowly, and with the maximum amount of creak. Simple neglect wouldn’t have caused that depth of groan; you’d need careful work with hot water over a period of weeks. The sergeant stopped, and then turned round very slowly while contriving to move as few muscles as possible.
He had mixed feelings about the fact that there was nothing in the doorway. In his experience, doors didn’t just open themselves.
He cleared his throat nervously.
Granny Weatherwax, right by his ear, said, ‘That’s a nasty cough you’ve got there. You did right in coming to me.’
The sergeant looked up at her with an expression of mad gratitude. He said, ‘Argle.’
‘And what about your men?’
‘She give them one too, sir.’
The duke rose from his chair and put his arms around the sergeant’s rusting chain mail shoulders. He was in a bad mood. He had spent half the night washing his hands. He kept thinking that something was whispering in his ear. His breakfast oatmeal had been served up too salty and roasted with an apple in it, and the crook had hysterics in the kitchen. You could tell the duke was extremely annoyed. He was polite. The duke was the kind of man who becomes more and more agreeable as his temper drains away, until the point is reached where the words ‘Thank you so much’ have the cutting edge of a guillotine.
‘Sergeant,’ he said, walking the man slowly across the floor.
‘Sir?’
‘I’m not sure I made your orders clear, sergeant,’ said the duke, in snake tones.
‘Sir?’
‘I mean, it is possible I may have confused you. I meant to say “Bring me a witch, in chains if necessary”, but perhaps what I
The sergeant wrinkled his forehead. Sarcasm had not hitherto entered his life. His experience of people being annoyed with him generally involved shouting and occasional bits of wood.
‘No, sir,’ he said.
‘I wonder why, then, you did not in fact do this thing that I asked?’
‘Sir?’
‘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. ‘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 …’
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.’
The senior witches exchanged a resigned glance.
‘But we got this lovely new lamp our Tracie sent me,’ said Nanny Ogg innocently. ‘And I was going to poke up the fire a bit.’
‘I have
‘Runes,’ said Magrat. There was a look of pleading in her eyes. ‘Look, just one candle?’
‘All right,’ said Nanny Ogg, relenting a bit. ‘If it makes you feel any better. Just the one, mind. And a decent white one. Nothing fancy.’
Magrat sighed. It probably wasn’t a good idea to bring out the rest of the contents of her bag.