'There have been precedents for that, too,' said Mr Slant.
The Assassin's eyes narrowed.
'I'm intrigued, Mr Slant, that as soon as the Lord Vetinari appears to be seriously ill, you pop up with suggestions like this. It sounds like … a remarkable coincidence.'
'There is no mystery, I assure you. Destiny works its course. Surely many of you have heard the rumours — that there is, in this city, someone with a bloodline traceable all the way back to the last royal family? Someone working in this very city in a comparatively humble position? A lowly Watchman, in fact?'
There were some nods, but not very definite ones. They were to nods what a grunt is to 'yes'. The guilds all picked up information. No one wanted to reveal how much, or how little, they personally knew, just in case they knew too little or, even worse, turned out to know too much.
However, Doc Pseudopolis of the Guild of Gamblers put on a careful poker face and said, 'Yes, but the tricentennial is coming up. And in a few years it'll be the Century of the Rat. There's something about centuries that gives people a kind of fever.'
'Nevertheless, the person exists,' said Mr Slant. The evidence stares one in the face if one looks in the right places.'
'Very well,' said Mr Boggis. 'Tell us the name of this captain.' He often lost large sums at poker.
'Captain?' said Mr Slant. 'I'm sorry to say his natural talents have thus far not commended him to that extent. He is a corporal. Corporal C. W. St J. Nobbs.'
There was silence.
And then there was a strange putt-putting sound, like water negotiating its way through a partially blocked pipe.
Queen Molly of the Beggars' Guild had so far been silent apart from occasional damp sucking noises as she tried to dislodge a particle of her lunch from the things which, because they were still in her mouth and apparently attached, were technically her teeth.
Now she was laughing. The hairs wobbled on every wart. 'Nobby Nobbs?' she said. 'You're talking about Nobby Nobbs?
'He is the last known descendant of the Earl of Ankh, who could trace his descent all the way to a distant cousin to the last king,' said Mr Slant. 'It's the talk of the city.'
'A picture forms in my mind,' said Dr Downey. 'Small monkeylike chap, always smoking very short cigarettes. Spotty. He squeezes them in public.'
'That's Nobby!' Queen Molly chuckled. 'Face like a blind carpenter's thumb!'
'Him? But the man's a tit!'
'And dim as a penny candle,' said Mr Boggis. 'I don't see—'
Suddenly he stopped, and then contracted the contemplative silence that was gradually affecting everyone else around the table.
'Don't see why we shouldn't … give this … due consideration,' he said, after a while.
The assembled leaders looked at the table. Then they looked at the ceiling. Then they studiously avoided one another's gaze.
'Blood will out,' said Mr Carry.
'When I've watched him go down the street I've always thought: "There's a man who walks in greatness,"' said Mrs Palm.
'He squeezes them in a very regal way, mind you. Very graciously.'
The silence rolled over the assembly again. But it was busy, in the same way that the silence of an anthill is busy.
'I must remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that poor Lord Vetinari is still alive,' said Mrs Palm.
'Indeed, indeed,' said Mr Slant. 'And long may he remain so. I've merely set out for you one option against that day, may it be a long time coming, when we should consider a … successor.'
'In any case,' said Dr Downey, 'there is no doubt that Vetinari has been over-doing it. If he survives — which is greatly to be hoped, of course — I feel we should require him to step down for the sake of his health. Well done thou good and faithful servant, and so on. Buy him a nice house in the country somewhere. Give him a pension. Make sure there's a seat for him at official dinners. Obviously, if he can be so easily poisoned now he should welcome the release from the chains of office.'
'What about the wizards?' said Mr Boggis.
'They've never got involved in civic concerns,' said Dr Downey. 'Give 'em four meat meals a day and tip your hat to them and they're happy. They know nothing about politics.'
The silence that followed was broken by the voice of Queen Molly of the Beggars. 'What about Vimes?'
Dr Downey shrugged. 'He is a servant of the city.'
'That's what I mean.'
'Surely we represent the city?'
'Hah! He won't see it that way. And you know what Vimes thinks about kings. It was a Vimes who chopped the head off the last one. There's a bloodline that thinks a swing of an axe can solve anything.'
'Now, Molly, you know Vimes'd probably take an axe to Vetinari if he thought he could get away with it. No love lost there, I fancy.'
'He won't like it. That's all I tell you. Vetinari keeps Vimes wound up. No knowing what happens if he unwinds all at once—'
'He's a public servant!' snapped Dr Downey.
Queen Molly made a face, which was not difficult in one so naturally well endowed, and sat back. 'So this is the new way of things, is it?' she muttered. 'Lot of ordinary men sit around a table and talk and suddenly the world's a different place? The sheep turn round and charge the shepherd?'
'There's a soirée at Lady Selachii's house this evening,' said Dr Downey, ignoring her. 'I believe Nobbs is being invited. Perhaps we can … meet him.'
Vimes told himself he was really going to inspect the progress on the new Watch House in Chittling Street. Cockbill Street was just round the corner. And then he'd call in, informally. No sense in sparing a man when they were pushed anyway, what with these murders and Vetinari and Detritus's anti-Slab crusade.
He turned the corner, and stopped.
Nothing much had changed. That was the shocking thing. After … oh, too many years … things had no right not to have changed.
But washing lines still criss-crossed the street between the grey, ancient buildings. Antique paint still peeled in the way cheap paint peeled when it had been painted on wood too old and rotten to take paint. Cockbill Street people were usually too penniless to afford decent paint, but always far too proud to use whitewash.
And the place was slightly smaller than he remembered. That was all.
When had he last come down here? He couldn't remember. It was beyond the Shades, and up until quite recently the Watch had tended to leave that area to its own unspeakable devices.
Unlike the Shades, though, Cockbill Street was clean, with the haunting, empty cleanliness you get when people can't afford to waste dirt. For Cockbill Street was where people lived who were worse than poor, because they didn't know how poor they were. If you asked them they would probably say something like 'mustn't grumble' or 'there's far worse off than us' or 'we've always kept uz heads above water and we don't owe nobody nowt'.
He could hear his granny speaking. 'No one's too poor to buy soap.' Of course, many people were. But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but, by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride.
What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that"?
Cockbill Street people would stand aside to let the meek through. For what kept them in Cockbill Street, mentally and physically, was their vague comprehension that there were rules. And they went through life filled with a quiet, distracted dread that they weren't quite obeying them.
People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn't true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people.
It was oddly quiet. Normally there'd be swarms of kids, and carts heading down towards the docks, but today the place had a shut-in look.
In the middle of t
he road was a chalked hopscotch path.
Vimes felt his knees go weak. It was still here! When had he last seen it? Thirty-five years ago? Forty? So it must have been drawn and redrawn thousands of times.
He'd been pretty good at it. Of course, they'd played it by Ankh-Morpork rules. Instead of kicking a stone they'd kicked William Scuggins. It had been just one of the many inventive games they'd played which had involved kicking, chasing or jumping on William Scuggins until he threw one of his famous wobblers and started frothing and violently attacking himself.
Vimes had been able to drop William in the square of his choice nine times out often. The tenth time, William bit his leg.
In those days, tormenting William and finding enough to eat had made for a simple, straightforward life. There weren't so many questions you didn't know the answers to, except maybe how to stop your leg festering.
Sir Samuel looked around, saw the silent street, and flicked a stone out of the gutter with his foot. Then he booted it surreptitiously along the squares, adjusted his cloak, and hopped and jumped his way up, turned, hopped—
What was it you shouted as you hopped? 'Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper?'? No? Or was it the one that went 'William Scuggins is a bastard'? Now he'd wonder about that all day.
A door opened across the street. Vimes froze, one leg in mid-air, as two black-clothed figures came out slowly and awkwardly.
This was because they were carrying a coffin.
The natural solemnity of the occasion was diminished by their having to squeeze around it and out into the street, pulling the casket after them and allowing two other pairs of bearers to edge their way into the daylight.
Vimes remembered himself in time to lower his other foot, and then remembered even more of himself and snatched his helmet off in respect.
Another coffin emerged. It was a lot smaller. It needed only two people to carry it and that was really one too many.
As mourners trooped out behind them, Vimes fumbled in a pocket for the scrap of paper Detritus had given him. The scene was, in its way, funny, like the bit in a circus where the coach stops and a dozen clowns get out of it. Apartment houses round here made up for their limited number of rooms by having a large number of people occupy them.
He found the paper and unfolded it. First Floor Back, 27 Cockbill Street.
And this was it. He'd arrived in time for a funeral. Two funerals.
'Looks like it's a really bad day to be a golem,' said Angua. There was a pottery hand lying in the gutter. 'That's the third one we've seen smashed in the street.'
There was a crash up ahead, and a dwarf came through a window more or less horizontally. His iron helmet struck sparks as he hit the street, but the dwarf was soon up again and plunging back through the adjacent doorway.
He emerged via the window a moment later but was fielded by Carrot, who set him on his feet.
'Hello, Mr Oresmiter! Are you keeping well? And what is happening here?'
'It's that devil Gimlet, Captain Carrot! You should be arresting him!'
'Why, what's he done?'
'He's been poisoning people, that's what!'
Carrot glanced at Angua, then back at Oresmiter. 'Poison?' he said. That's a very serious allegation.'
'You're telling me! I was up all night with Mrs Oresmiter! I didn't think much about it until I came in here this morning and there were other people complaining—'
He tried to struggle out of Carrot's grip. 'You know what?' he said. 'You know what? We looked in his cold room and you know what? You know what? You know what he's been selling as meat?'
'Tell me,' said Carrot.
'Pork and beef!'
'Oh, dear.'
'And lamb!'
'Teh, tch.'
'Hardly any rat at all!'
Carrot shook his head at the duplicity of traders.
'And Snori Glodssonsunclesson said he had Rat Surprise last night and he'll swear there were chicken bones in it!'
Carrot let go of the dwarf. 'You stay here,' he said to Angua and, head bowed, stepped inside Gimlet's Hole Food Delicatessen.
An axe spun towards him. He caught it almost absent-mindedly and tossed it casually aside.
'Ow!'
There was a melee of dwarfs around the counter. The row had already gone well past the stage when it had anything much to do with the subject in hand and, these being dwarfs, now included matters of vital importance such as whose grandfather had stolen whose grandfather's mining claim three hundred years ago and whose axe was at whose throat right now.
But there was something about Carrot's presence. The fighting gradually stopped. The fighters tried to look as if they'd just happened to be standing there. There was a sudden and general 'Axe? What axe? Oh, this axe? I was just showing it to my friend Bjorn here, good old Bjorn' feel to the atmosphere.
'All right,' said Carrot. 'What's all this about poison? Mr Gimlet first.'
'It's a diabolical lie!' shouted Gimlet, from somewhere under the heap. 'I run a wholesome restaurant! My tables are so clean you could eat your dinner off them!'
Carrot raised his hands to stop the outburst this caused. 'Someone said something about rats,' he said.
'I told them, I use only the very best rats!' shouted Gimlet. 'Good plump rats from the best locations! None of your latrine rubbish! And they're hard to come by, let me tell you!'
'And when you can't get them, Mr Gimlet?' said Carrot.
Gimlet paused. Carrot was hard to lie to. 'All right,' he mumbled. 'Maybe when there's not enough I might sort of plump out the stock with some chicken, maybe just a bit of beef—'
'Hah! A bit?' More voices were raised.
'That's right, you should see his cold room, Mr Carrot!'
'Yeah, he uses steak and cuts little legs in it and covers it with rat sauce!'
'I don't know, you try to do your best at very reasonable prices and this is the thanks you get?' said Gimlet hotly. 'It's hard enough to make ends meet as it is!'
'You don't even make 'em of the right meat!'
Carrot sighed. There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.
'All right,' he said. 'But you can't get poisoned by steak. No, honestly. No. No, shut up, all of you. No, I don't care what your mothers told you. Now, I want to know about this poisoning, Gimlet.'
Gimlet struggled to his feet.
'We did Rat Surprise last night for the Sons of Bloodaxe annual dinner,' he said. There was a general groan. 'And it was rat.' He raised his voice against the complaining. 'You can't use anything else — listen — you've got to have the noses poking through the pastry, all right? Some of the best rat we've had in for a long time, let me tell you!'
'And you were all ill afterwards?' said Carrot, taking out his notebook.
'Sweating all night!'
'Couldn't see straight!'
'I reckon I know every knothole on the back of the privy door!'
'I'll write that down as a "definitely",' said Carrot. 'Was there anything else on the dinner menu?'
'Vole-au-vents and Cream of Rat,' said Gimlet. 'All hygienically prepared.'
'How do you mean, "hygienically prepared"?' said Carrot.
'The chef is under strict orders to wash his hands afterwards.'
The assembled dwarfs nodded. This was certainly pretty hygienic. You didn't want people going around with ratty hands.
'Anyway, you've all been eating here for years,' said Gimlet, sensing this slight veer in his direction. This is the first time there's been any trouble, isn't it? My rats are famous!'
'Your chicken's going to be pretty famous, too,' said Carrot.
There was laughter this time. Even Gimlet joined in. 'All right, I'm sorry about the chicken. But it was that or very poor rats, and you know I only buy from Wee Mad Arthur. He's trustworthy, whatever else you may say about him. You just can't get better rats. Everyone knows that.'
'That'll be Wee Mad Arthur in Gleam Street?' said Ca
rrot.
'Yes. Not a mark on 'em, most of the time.'
'Have you got any left?'
'One or two.' Gimlet's expression changed. 'Here, you don't think he poisoned them, do you? I never did trust that little bugger!'
'Enquiries are continuing,' said Carrot. He tucked his notebook away. 'I'd like some rats, please. Those rats. To go.' He glanced at the menu, patted his pocket and looked questioningly out through the door at Angua.
'You don't have to buy them,' she said wearily. 'They're evidence.'
'We can't defraud an innocent tradesman who may be the victim of circumstances,' said Carrot.
'You want ketchup?' said Gimlet. 'Only they're extra with ketchup.'
The funeral carriage went slowly through the streets. It looked quite expensive, but that was Cockbill Street for you. People put money by. Vimes remembered that. You always put money by, in Cockbill Street. You saved up for a rainy day even if it was pouring already. And you'd die of shame if people thought you could afford only a cheap funeral.
Half a dozen black-clad mourners came along behind, together with perhaps a score of people who had tried at least to look respectable.
Vimes followed the procession at a distance all the way to the cemetery behind the Temple of Small Gods, where he lurked awkwardly among the gravestones and sombre graveyard trees while the priest mumbled on.
The gods had made the people of Cockbill Street poor, honest and provident, Vimes reflected. They might as well have hung signs saying 'Kick me' on their backs and had done with it. Yet Cockbill Street people tended towards religion, at least of the less demonstrative kind. They always put a little life by for a rainy eternity.
Eventually the crowd around the graves broke up and drifted away with the aimless look of people whose immediate future contains ham rolls.
Vimes spotted a tearful young woman in the main group and advanced carefully. 'Er… are you Mildred Easy?' he said.
She nodded. 'Who are you?' She took in the cut of his coat and added, 'sir?'
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