Men at Arms tds-15

by Terry Pratchett

  “Me? Of course not!”

  “Ah. Then I must be a dwarf, yes. And that's a troll behind me,” said Cuddy. Detritus pulled himself into something resembling attention.

  “We've come to see if you can tell us what's on this paper,” said Cuddy.

  “Yur,” said Detritus.

  Silverfish looked at it.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “some of old Leonard's stuff. Well?”

  “Leonard?” said Cuddy. He glared at Detritus. “Write this down,” he snapped.

  “Leonard of Quirm,” said the alchemist.

  Cuddy still looked lost.

  “Never heard of him?” said Silverfish.

  “Can't say I have, sir.”

  “I thought everyone knew about Leonard da Quirm. Quite barmy. But a genius, too.”

  “Was he an alchemist?”

  Write this down, write this down… Detritus looked around blearily for a burnt bit of wood and a handy wall.

  “Leonard? No. He didn't belong to a Guild. Or he belonged to all the Guilds, I suppose. He got around quite a bit. He tinkered, if you know what I mean?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He painted a bit, and messed about with mechanisms. Any old thing.”

  Or a hammer and chisel even, thought Detritus.

  “This,” said Silverfish, “is a formula for… oh, well, I might as well tell you, it's hardly a big secret… it's a formula for what we called No. 1 Powder. Sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal. You use it in fireworks. Any fool could make it up. But it looks odd because it's written back to front.”

  “This sounds important,” hissed Cuddy to the troll.

  “Oh, no. He always used to write back to front,” said Silverfish. “He was odd like that. But very clever all the same. Haven't you seen his portrait of the Mona Ogg?”

  “I don't think so.”

  Silverfish handed the parchment to Detritus, who squinted at it as if he knew what it meant. Maybe he could write on this, he thought.

  “The teeth followed you around the room. Amazing. In fact some people said they followed them out of the room and all the way down the street.”

  “I think we should talk to Mr da Quirm,” said Cuddy.

  “Oh, you could do that, you could do that, certainly,” said Silverfish. “But he might not be in a position to listen. He disappeared a couple of years ago.”

  …then when I find something to write with, thought Detritus, I have to find someone teach me how write…

  “Disappeared? How?” said Cuddy.

  “We think,” said Silverfish, leaning closer, “that he found a way of making himself invisible.”

  “Really?”

  “Because,” said Silverfish, nodding conspiratorially, “no-one's seen him.”

  “Ah,” said Cuddy. “Er. This is just off of the top of my head, you understand, but I suppose he couldn't… just have gone somewhere where you couldn't see him?”

  “Nah, that wouldn't be like old Leonard. He wouldn't disappear. But he might vanish.”

  “Oh.”

  “He was a bit… unhinged, if you know what I mean. Head too full of brains. Ha, I remember he had this idea once of getting lightning out of lemons! Hey, Sendivoge, you remember Leonard and his lightning lemons?”

  Sendivoge made little circular motions alongside his head with one finger. “Oh, yes. ‘If you stick copper and zinc rods in the lemon, hey presto, you get tame lightning.’ Man was an idiot!”

  “Oh, not an idiot,” said Silverfish, picking up a billiard ball that had miraculously escaped the detonations. “Just so sharp he kept cutting himself, as my granny used to say. Lightning lemons! Where's the sense in that? It was as bad as his ‘voices-in-the-sky’ machine. I told him: Leonard, I said, what are wizards for, eh? There's perfectly normal magic available for that kind of thing. Lightning lemons? It'll be men with wings next! And you know what he said? You know what he said? He said: Funny you should say that… Poor old chap.”

  Even Cuddy joined in the laughter.

  “And did you try it?” he said, afterwards.

  “Try what?” said Silverfish.

  “Har. Har. Har,” said Detritus, toiling behind the others.

  “Putting the metal rods in the lemons?”

  “Don't be a damn fool.”

  “What dis letter mean?” said Detritus, pointing at the paper.

  They looked.

  “Oh, that's not a symbol,” said Silverfish. “That's just old Leonard's way. He was always doodling in margins. Doodle, doodle, doodle. I told him: you should call yourself Mr Doodle.”

  “I thought it was some alchemy thing,” said Cuddy. “It looks a bit like a crossbow without the bow. And this word Ennogeht. What does that mean?”

  “Search me. Sounds barbarian to me. Anyway… if that's all, officer… we've got some serious research to do,” said Silverfish, tossing the fake ivory ball up in the air and catching it again. “We're not all daydreamers like poor old Leonard.”

  “Ennogeht,” said Cuddy, turning the paper round and round. “T-h-e-g-o-n-n-e—”

  Silverfish missed the ball. Cuddy got behind Detritus just in time.

  “I've done this before,” said Sergeant Colon, as he and Nobby approached the Fools' Guild. “Keep up against the wall when I bangs the knocker, all right?”

  It was shaped like a pair of artificial breasts, the sort that are highly amusing to rugby players and anyone whose sense of humour has been surgically removed. Colon gave it a quick rap and then flung himself to safety.

  There was a whoop, a few honks on a horn, a little tune that someone somewhere must have thought was very jolly, a small hatch slid aside above the knocker and a custard pie emerged slowly, on the end of a wooden arm. Then the arm snapped and the pie collapsed in a little heap by Colon's foot.

  “It's sad, isn't it?” said Nobby.

  The door opened awkwardly, but only by a few inches, and a small clown stared up at him.

  “I say, I say, I say,” it said, “why did the fat man knock at the door?”

  “I don't know,” said Colon automatically. “Why did the fat man knock at the door?”

  They stared at each other, tangled in the punchline.

  “That's what I asked you,” said the clown reproachfully. He had a depressed, hopeless voice.

  Sergeant Colon struck out towards sanity.

  “Sergeant Colon, Night Watch,” he said, “and this here is Corporal Nobbs. We've come to talk to someone about the man who… was found in the river, OK?”

  “Oh. Yes. Poor Brother Beano. I suppose you'd better come in, then,” said the clown.

  Nobby was about to push at the door when Colon stopped him, and pointed wordlessly upwards.

  “There seems to be a bucket of whitewash over the door,” he said.

  “Is there?” said the clown. He was very small, with huge boots that made him look like a capital L. His face was plastered with flesh-coloured make-up on which a big frown had been painted. His hair had been made from a couple of old mops, painted red. He wasn't fat, but a sort of hoop in his trousers was supposed to make him look amusingly overweight. A pair of rubber braces, so that his trousers bounced up and down when he walked, were a further component in the overall picture of a complete and utter twerp.

  “Yes,” said Colon. “There is.”

  “Sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Sorry about that,” said the clown. “It's stupid, I know, but kind of traditional. Wait a moment.”

  There were sounds of a stepladder being lugged into position, and various clankings and swearwords.

  “All right, come on in.”

  The clown led the way through the gatehouse. There was no sound but the flop-flop of his boots on the cobbles. Then an idea seemed to occur to him.

  “It's a long shot, I know, but I suppose neither of you gentlemen'd like a sniff of my buttonhole?”

  “No.”

  “No.”

  “No, I suppose not.” The clown sigh
ed. “It's not easy, you know. Clowning, I mean. I'm on gate duty 'cos I'm on probation.”

  “You are?”

  “I keep on forgetting: is it crying on the outside and laughing on the inside? I always get it mixed up.”

  “About this Beano—” Colon began.

  “We're just holding his funeral,” said the little clown. “That's why my trousers are at half-mast.”

  They stepped out into the sunlight again.

  The inner courtyard was lined with clowns and fools. Bells tinkled in the breeze. Sunlight glinted off red noses and the occasional nervous jet of water from a fake buttonhole.

  The clown ushered the guards into a line of fools.

  “I'm sure Dr Whiteface will talk to you as soon as we've finished,” he said. “My name's Boffo, by the way.” He held out his hand hopefully.

  “Don't shake it,” Colon warned.

  Boffo looked crestfallen.

  A band struck up, and a procession of Guild members emerged from the chapel. A clown walked a little way ahead, carrying a small urn.

  “This is very moving,” said Boffo.

  On a dais on the opposite side of the quadrangle was a fat clown in baggy trousers, huge braces, a bow tie that was spinning gently in the breeze, and a top hat. His face had been painted into a picture of misery. He held a bladder on a stick.

  The clown with the urn reached the dais, climbed the steps, and waited.

  The band fell silent.

  The clown in the top hat hit the urn-carrier about the head with the bladder—once, twice, three times…

  The urn-bearer stepped forward, waggled his wig, took the urn in one hand and the clown's belt in the other and, with great solemnity, poured the ashes of the late Brother Beano into the other clown's trousers.

  A sigh went up from the audience. The band struck up the clown anthem “The March of the Idiots”, and the end of the trombone flew off and hit a clown on the back of the head. He turned and swung a punch at the clown behind him, who ducked, causing a third clown to be knocked through the bass drum.

  Colon and Nobby looked at one another and shook their heads.

  Boffo produced a large red and white handkerchief and blew his nose with a humorous honking sound.

  “Classic,” he said. “It's what he would have wanted.”

  “Have you any idea what happened?” said Colon.

  “Oh, yes. Brother Grineldi did the old heel-and-toe trick and tipped the urn down—”

  “I mean, why did Beano die?”

  “Um. We think it was an accident,” said Boffo.

  “An accident,” said Colon flatly.

  “Yes. That's what Dr Whiteface thinks.” Boffo glanced upwards, briefly. They followed his gaze. The rooftops of the Assassins' Guild adjoined the Fools' Guild. It didn't do to upset neighbours like that, especially when the only weapon you had was a custard pie edged with short-crust pastry.

  “That's what Dr Whiteface thinks,” said Boffo again, looking at his enormous shoes.

  Sergeant Colon liked a quiet life. And the city could spare a clown or two. In his opinion, the loss of the whole boiling could only make the world a slightly happier place. And yet… and yet… honestly, he didn't know what had got into the Watch lately. It was Carrot, that was what it was. Even old Vimes had picked it up. We don't let things lie any more…

  “Maybe he was cleaning a club, sort of thing, and it accidentally went off,” said Nobby. He'd caught it, too.

  “No-one'd want to kill young Beano,” said the clown, in a quiet voice. “He was a friendly soul. Friends everywhere.”

  “Almost everywhere,” said Colon.

  The funeral was over. The jesters, jokers and clowns were going about their business, getting stuck in door-ways on the way. There was much pushing and shoving and honking of noses and falling of prats. It was a scene to make a happy man slit his wrists on a fine spring rang.

  “All I know is,” said Boffo, in a low voice, “that when I saw him yesterday he was looking very… odd. I called out to him when he was going through the gates and—”

  “How do you mean, odd?” said Colon. I am detectoring, he thought, with a faint touch of pride. People are Helping me with My Inquiries.

  “Dunno. Odd. Not quite himself—”

  “This was yesterday?”

  “Oh, yes. In the morning. I know because the gate rota—”

  “Yesterday morning?”

  “That's what I said, mister. Mind you, we were all a bit nervous after the bang—”

  “Brother Boffo!”

  “Oh, no—” mumbled the clown.

  A figure was striding towards them. A terrible figure.

  No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable. It was nice to know there was someone worse off than you. Someone had to be the butt of the world.

  But even clowns are frightened of something, and that is the white-faced clown. The one who never gets in the way of the custard. The one in the shiny white clothes, and the deadpan white make-up. The one with the little pointy hat and the thin mouth and the delicate black eyebrows.

  Dr Whiteface.

  “Who are these gentlemen?” he demanded.

  “Er—” Boffo began.

  “Night Watch, sir,” said Colon, saluting.

  “And why are you here?”

  “Investigating our inquiries as to the fatal demise of the clown Beano, sir,” said Colon.

  “I rather think that is Guild business, sergeant. Don't you?”

  “Well, sir, he was found in the—”

  “I am sure it is something we don't need to bother the Watch with,” said Dr Whiteface.

  Colon hesitated. He'd prefer to face Dr Cruces than this apparition. At least the Assassins were supposed to be unpleasant. Clowns, were only one step away from mime artists, too.

  “No, sir,” he said. “It was obviously an acddent, right?”

  “Quite so. Brother Boffo will show you to the door,” said the head clown. “And then,” he added, “he will report to my office. Does he understand?”

  “Yes, Dr Whiteface,” mumbled Boffo.

  “What'll he do to you?” said Nobby, as they headed for the gate.

  “Hat full of whitewash, probably,” said Boffo. “Pie inna face if I'm lucky.”

  He opened the wicket gate.

  “A lot of us ain't happy about this,” he whispered. “I don't see why those buggers should get away with it. We ought to go round to the Assassins and have it out with them.”

  “Why the Assassins?” said Colon. “Why would they kill a clown?”

  Boffo looked guilty. “I never said a thing!”

  Colon glared at him. “There's definitely something odd happening, Mr Boffo.”

  Boffo looked around, as if expecting a vengeful custard pie at any moment.

  “You find his nose,” he hissed. “You just find his nose. His poor nose!”

  The gate slammed shut.

  Sergeant Colon turned to Nobby.

  “Did exhibit A have a nose, Nobby?”

  “Yes, Fred.”

  “Then what was that about?”

  “Search me.” Nobby scratched a promising boil. “P'raps he meant a false nose. You know. Those red ones on elastic? The ones,” said Nobby, grimacing, “they think are funny. He didn't have one.”

  Colon rapped on the door, taking care to stand out of the way of any jolly amusing booby traps.

  The hatch slid aside.

  “Yes?” hissed Boffo.

  “Did you mean his false nose?” said Colon.

  “His real one! Now bugger off!”

  The hatch snapped back.

  “Mental,” said Nobby, firmly.

  “Beano had a real nose. Did it look wrong to you?” said Colon.

  “No. It had a couple of holes in it.”

  “Well, I don't know about noses,” sa
id Colon, “but either Brother Boffo is dead wrong or there's something fishy going on.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, Nobby, you're what I might call a career soldier, right?”

  “'S'right, Fred.”

  “How many dishonourable discharges have you had?”

  “Lots,” said Nobby, proudly. “But I always puts a poultice on 'em.”

  “You've been on a lot of battlefields, ain't you?”

  “Dozens.”

  Sergeant Colon nodded.

  “So you've seen a lot of corpses, right, when you've been ministering to the fallen—”

  Corporal Nobbs nodded. They both knew that “ministering” meant harvesting any personal jewellery and stealing their boots. In many a faraway battlefield the last thing many a mortally wounded foeman ever saw was Corporal Nobbs heading towards him with a sack, a knife and a calculating expression.

  “Shame to let good stuff go to waste,” said Nobby.

  “So you've noticed how dead bodies get… deader,” said Sergeant Colon.

  “Deader than dead?”

  “You know. More corpsey,” said Sergeant Colon, forensic expert.

  “Goin' stiff and purple and suchlike?”

  “Right.”

  “And then sort of manky and runny…”

  “Yes, all right—”

  “Makes it easier to get the rings off, mind you—”

  “The point is, Nobby, that you can tell how old a corpse is. That clown, for e.g. You saw him, same as me. How long, would you say?”

  “About 5' 9", I'd say. His boots didn't fit, I know that. Too floppy.”

  “I meant how long he'd been dead.”

  “Couple of days. You can tell because there's this—”

  “So how come Boffo saw him yesterday morning?”

  They strolled onwards.

  “Bit of a poser, that is,” said Nobby.

  “You're right. I expect the captain'll be very interested.”

  “Maybe he was a zombie?”

  “Shouldn't think so.”

  “Never could stand zombies,” Nobby mused.

  “Really?”

  “It was always so hard to nick their boots.”

  Sergeant Colon nodded at a passing beggar.

  “You still doing the folk dancing on your nights off, Nobby?”

  “Yes, Fred. We're practising ‘Gathering Sweet Lilacs’ this week. There is a very complicated double crossover-step.”