Lords And Ladies

by Pratchett, Terry

  ‘I thought you never threw them away,’ she said. ‘And you ain’t put on any weight, so they’ll still fit. On with the motley. Magrat’ll appreciate it.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Verence. ‘I’m very firm about this. I’m king now. It’d be demeaning for Magrat to marry a Fool. I’ve got a position to maintain, for the sake of the kingdom. Besides, there is such a thing as pride.’

  Granny stared at him for so long that he shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘Well, there is,’ he said.

  Granny nodded, and walked towards the doorway.

  ‘Why’re you leaving?’ said Verence nervously.

  ‘I ain’t leaving,’ said Granny, quietly, ‘I’m just shutting the door.’

  And then there was the incident with the crown.

  Ceremonies and Protocols of The Kingdom of Lancre was eventually found after a hurried search of Verence’s bedroom. It was very clear about the procedure. The new queen was crowned, by the king, as part of the ceremony. It wasn’t technically difficult for any king who knew which end of a queen was which, which even the most inbred king figured out in two goes.

  But it seemed to Ponder Stibbons that the ritual wobbled a bit at this point.

  It seemed, in fact, that just as he was about to lower the crown on the bride’s head he glanced across the hall to where the skinny old witch was standing. And nearly everyone else did too, including the bride.

  The old witch nodded very slightly.

  Magrat was crowned.

  Wack-fol-a-diddle, etc.

  * * *

  The bride and groom stood side by side, shaking hands with the long line of guests in that dazed fashion normal at this point in the ceremony.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be very happy—’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Ook!’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Nail it to the counter, Lord Ferguson, and damn the cheesemongers!’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Can I kiss the bride?’

  It dawned on Verence that he was being addressed by fresh air. He looked down.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘you are—?’

  ‘My card,’ said Casanunda.

  Verence read it. His eyebrows rose.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Uh. Um. Well, well, well. Number two, eh?’

  ‘I try harder,’ said Casanunda.

  Verence looked around guiltily, and then bent down until his mouth was level with the dwarf’s ear.

  ‘Could I have a word with you in a minute or two?’

  The Lancre Morris Men got together again for the first time at the reception. They found it hard to talk to one another. Several of them jigged up and down absent-mindedly as they talked.

  ‘All right,’ said Jason, ‘anyone remember? Really remember?’

  ‘I remember the start,’ said Tailor the other weaver. ‘Definitely remember the start. And the dancing in the woods. But the Entertainment—’

  ‘There was elves in it,’ said Tinker the tinker.

  ‘That’s why it all got buggered up,’ said Thatcher the carter. ‘There was a lot of shouting, too.’

  ‘There was someone with horns on,’ said Carter, ‘and a great big—’

  ‘It was all,’ said Jason, ‘a bit of a dream.’

  ‘Hey, look over there, Carter,’ said Weaver, winking at the others, ‘there’s that monkey. You’ve got something to ask it, ain’t you?’

  Carter blinked. ‘Coo, yes,’ he said.

  ‘Shouldn’t waste a golden opportunity if I was you,’ said Weaver, with the happy malice often shown by the clever to the simple.

  The Librarian was chatting to Ponder and the Bursar. He looked around as Carter prodded him.

  ‘You’ve been over to Slice, then, have you?’ he said, in his cheery open way.

  The Librarian gave him a look of polite incomprehension.

  ‘Oook?’

  Carter looked perplexed.

  ‘That’s where you put your nut, ain’t it?’

  The Librarian gave him another odd look, and shook his head.

  ‘Oook.’

  ‘Weaver!’ Carter shouted, ‘the monkey says he didn’t put his nut where the sun don’t shine! You said he did! You didn’t, did you? He said you did.’ He turned to the Librarian. ‘He didn’t, Weaver. See, I knew you’d got it wrong. You’re daft. There’s no monkeys in Slice.’

  Silence flowed outwards from the two of them.

  Ponder Stibbons held his breath.

  ‘This is a lovely party,’ said the Bursar to a chair, ‘I wish I was here.’

  The Librarian picked up a large bottle from the table. He tapped Carter on the shoulder. Then he poured him a large drink and patted him on the head.

  Ponder relaxed and turned back to what he was doing. He’d tied a knife to a bit of string and was gloomily watching it spin round and round …

  On his way home that night Weaver was picked up by a mysterious assailant and dropped into the Lancre. No-one ever found out why. Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, especially simian ones. They’re not all that subtle.

  Others went home that night.

  ‘She’ll be getting ideas above her station in life,’ said Granny Weatherwax, as the two witches strolled through the scented air.

  ‘She’s a queen. That’s pretty high,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Almost as high as witches.’

  ‘Yes … well … but you ain’t got to give yourself airs,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘We’re advantaged, yes, but we act with modesty and we don’t Put Ourselves Forward. No-one could say I haven’t been decently modest all my life.’

  ‘You’ve always been a bit of a shy violet, I’ve always said,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘I’m always telling people, when it comes to humility you won’t find anyone more humile than Esme Weatherwax.’

  ‘Always keep myself to myself and minded my own business—’

  ‘Barely known you were there half the time,’ said Nanny Ogg.

  ‘I was talking, Gytha.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  They walked along in silence for a while. It was a warm dry evening. Birds sang in the trees.

  Nanny said, ‘Funny to think of our Magrat being married and everything.’

  ‘What do you mean, everything?’

  ‘Well, you know – married,’ said Nanny. ‘I gave her a few tips. Always wear something in bed. Keeps a man interested.’

  ‘You always wore your hat.’

  ‘Right.’

  Nanny waved a sausage on a stick. She always believed in stocking up on any free food that was available.

  ‘I thought the wedding feast was very good, didn’t you? And Magrat looked radiant, I thought.’

  ‘I thought she looked hot and flustered.’

  ‘That is radiant, with brides.’

  ‘You’re right, though,’ said Granny Weatherwax, who was walking a little way ahead. ‘It was a good dinner. I never had this Vegetarian Option stuff before.’

  ‘When I married Mr Ogg, we had three dozen oysters at our wedding feast. Mind you, they didn’t all work.’

  ‘And I like the way they give us all a bit o’ the wedding cake in a little bag,’ said Granny.

  ‘Right. You know, they says, if you puts a bit under your pillow, you dream of your future husb …’ Nanny Ogg’s tongue tripped over itself.

  She stopped, embarrassed, which was unusual in an Ogg.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Granny. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Sorry, Esme.’

  ‘Everything happens somewhere. I know. I know. Everything happens somewhere. So it’s all the same in the end.’

  ‘That’s very continuinuinuum thinking, Esme.’

  ‘Cake’s nice,’ said Granny, ‘but … right now … don’t know why … what I could really do with, Gytha, right now … is a sweet.’

  The last word hung in the evening air like the echo of a gunshot.

  Nanny stopped. Her hand flew to her pocket, where the usual bag of fluff-encrusted boiled s
weets resided. She stared at the back of Esme Weatherwax’s head, at the tight bun of grey hair under the brim of the pointy hat.

  ‘Sweet?’ she said.

  ‘I expect you’ve got another bag now,’ said Granny, without looking around.

  ‘Esme—’

  ‘You got anything to say, Gytha? About bags of sweets?’

  Granny Weatherwax still hadn’t turned around.

  Nanny looked at her boots.

  ‘No, Esme,’ she said meekly.

  ‘I knew you’d go up to the Long Man, you know. How’d you get in?’

  ‘Used one of the special horseshoes.’

  Granny nodded. ‘You didn’t ought to have brung him into it, Gytha.’

  ‘Yes, Esme.’

  ‘He’s as tricky as she is.’

  ‘Yes, Esme.’

  ‘You’re trying pre-emptive meekness on me.’

  ‘Yes, Esme.’

  They walked a little further.

  ‘What was that dance your Jason and his men did when they’d got drunk?’ said Granny.

  ‘It’s the Lancre Stick and Bucket Dance, Esme.’

  ‘It’s legal, is it?’

  ‘Technically they shouldn’t do it when there’s women present,’ said Nanny. ‘Otherwise it’s sexual morrisment.’

  ‘And I thought Magrat was very surprised when you recited that poem at the reception.’

  ‘Poem?’

  ‘The one where you did the gestures.’

  ‘Oh, that poem.’

  ‘I saw Verence making notes on his napkin.’

  Nanny reached again into the shapeless recesses of her clothing and produced an entire bottle of champagne you could have sworn there was no room for.

  ‘Mind you, I thought she looked happy,’ she said. ‘Standing there wearing about half of a torn muddy dress and chain-mail underneath. Hey, d’you know what she told me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know that ole painting of Queen Ynci? You know, the one with the iron bodice? Her with all the spikes and knives on her chariot? Well, she said she was sure the … the spirit of Ynci was helping her. She said she wore the armour and she did things she’d never dare do.’

  ‘My word,’ said Granny, non-committally.

  ‘Funny ole world,’ agreed Nanny.

  They walked in silence for a while.

  ‘So you didn’t tell her that Queen Ynci never existed, then?’

  ‘No point.’

  ‘Old King Lully invented her entirely ’cos he thought we needed a bit of romantic history. He was a bit mad about that. He even had the armour made.’

  ‘I know. My great-grandma’s husband hammered it out of a tin bath and a couple of saucepans.’

  ‘But you didn’t think you ought to tell her that?’

  ‘No.’

  Granny nodded.

  ‘Funny thing,’ she said, ‘even when Magrat’s completely different, she’s just the same.’

  Nanny Ogg produced a wooden spoon from somewhere in her apron. Then she raised her hat and carefully lifted down a bowl of cream, custard and jelly which she had secreted there.41

  ‘Huh. I really don’t know why you pinches food the whole time,’ said Granny. ‘Verence’d give you a bathful of the stuff if you asked. You know he don’t touch custard himself.’

  ‘More fun this way,’ said Nanny. ‘I deserve a bit of fun.’

  There was a rustling in the thick bushes and the unicorn burst through.

  It was mad. It was angry. It was in a world where it did not belong. And it was being driven.

  It pawed the ground a hundred yards away, and lowered its horn.

  ‘Whoops,’ said Nanny, dropping her just desserts. ‘Come on. There’s a tree here, come on.’

  Granny Weatherwax shook her head.

  ‘No. I ain’t runnin’ this time. She couldn’t get me before and she’s tryin’ through an animal, eh?’

  ‘Will you look at the size of the horn on that thing?’

  ‘I can see clear enough,’ said Granny calmly.

  The unicorn lowered its head and charged. Nanny Ogg reached the nearest tree with low branches and leapt upwards …

  Granny Weatherwax folded her arms.

  ‘Come on, Esme!’

  ‘No. I ain’t been thinking clear enough, but I am now. There’s some things I don’t have to run from.’

  The white shape bulleted down the avenue of trees, a thousand pounds of muscle behind twelve inches of glistening horn. Steam swirled behind it.

  ‘Esme!’

  Circle time was ending. Besides, she knew now why her mind had felt so unravelled, and that was a help. She couldn’t hear the ghostly thoughts of all the other Esme Weatherwaxes any more.

  Perhaps some lived in a world ruled by elves. Or had died long ago. Or were living what they thought were happy lives. Granny Weatherwax seldom wished for anything, because wishing was soppy, but she felt a tiny regret that she’d never be able to meet them.

  Perhaps some were going to die, now, here on this path. Everything you did meant that a million copies of you did something else. Some were going to die. She’d sensed their future deaths … the deaths of Esme Weatherwax. And couldn’t save them, because chance did not work like that.

  On a million hillsides the girl ran, on a million bridges the girl chose, on a million paths the woman stood …

  All different, all one.

  All she could do for all of them was be herself, here and now, as hard as she could.

  She stuck out a hand.

  A few yards away the unicorn hit an invisible wall. Its legs flailed as it tried to stop, its body contorted in pain, and it slid the rest of the way to Granny’s feet on its back.

  ‘Gytha,’ said Granny, as the beast tried to get upright, ‘you’ll take off your stockings and knot ’em into a halter and pass it to me carefully.’

  ‘Esme …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ain’t got no stockings on, Esme.’

  ‘What about the lovely red and white pair I gave you on Hogswatchnight? I knitted ’em myself. You know how I hates knitting.’

  ‘Well, it’s a warm night. I likes to, you know, let the air circulate.’

  ‘I had the devil of a time with the heels.’

  ‘Sorry, Esme.’

  ‘At least you’ll be so good as to run up to my place and bring everything that’s in the bottom of the dresser.’

  ‘Yes, Esme.’

  ‘But before that you’ll call in at your Jason’s and tell him to get the forge good and hot.’

  Nanny Ogg stared down at the struggling unicorn. It seemed to be stuck, terrified of Granny but at the same time quite unable to escape.

  ‘Oh, Esme, you’re never going to ask our Jason to—’

  ‘I won’t ask him to do anything. And I ain’t asking you, neither.’

  Granny Weatherwax removed her hat, skimming it into the bushes. Then, her eyes never leaving the animal, she reached up to the iron-grey bun of her hair and removed a few crucial pins.

  The bun uncoiled a waking snake of fine hair, which unwound down to her waist when she shook her head a couple of times.

  Nanny watched in paralysed fascination as she reached up again and broke a single hair at its root.

  Granny Weatherwax’s hands made a complicated motion in the air as she made a noose out of something almost too thin to see. She ignored the thrashing horn and dropped it over the unicorn’s neck. Then she pulled.

  Struggling, its unshod hooves kicking up great clods of mud, the unicorn struggled to its feet.

  ‘That’ll never hold it,’ said Nanny, sidling around the tree.

  ‘I could hold it with a cobweb, Gytha Ogg. With a cobweb. Now go about your business.’

  ‘Yes, Esme.’

  The unicorn threw back its head and screamed.

  Half the town was waiting as Granny led the beast into Lancre, hooves skidding on the cobbles, because when you tell Nanny Ogg you tell everyone.

  It danced
at the end of the impossibly thin tether, kicking out at the terminally unwary, but never quite managing to pull free.

  Jason Ogg, still in his best clothes, was standing nervously at the open doorway to the forge. Super-heated air vibrated over the chimney.

  ‘Mister Blacksmith,’ said Granny Weatherwax, ‘I have a job for you.’

  ‘Er,’ said Jason, ‘that’s a unicorn, is that.’

  ‘Correct.’

  The unicorn screamed again, and rolled mad red eyes at Jason.

  ‘No-one’s ever put shoes on a unicorn,’ said Jason.

  ‘Think of this,’ said Granny Weatherwax, ‘as your big moment.’

  The crowd clustered round, trying to see and hear while keeping out of the way of the hooves.

  Jason rubbed his chin with his hammer.

  ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘Listen to me, Jason Ogg,’ said Granny, hauling on the hair as the creature skittered around in a circle, ‘you can shoe anything anyone brings you. And there’s a price for that, ain’t there?’

  Jason gave Nanny Ogg a panic-stricken look. She had the grace to look embarrassed.

  ‘She never told me about it,’ said Granny, with her usual ability to read Nanny’s expression through the back of her own head.

  She leaned closer to Jason, almost hanging from the plunging beast. ‘The price for being able to shoe anything, anything that anyone brings you … is having to shoe anything anyone brings you. The price for being the best is always … having to be the best. And you pays it, same as me.’

  The unicorn kicked several inches of timber out of the doorframe.

  ‘But iron—’ said Jason. ‘And nails—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Iron’ll kill it,’ said Jason. ‘If I nail iron to ’n, I’ll kill ‘n. Killing’s not part of it. I’ve never killed anything. I was up all night with that ant, it never felt a thing. I won’t hurt a living thing that never done me no harm.’

  ‘Did you get that stuff from my dresser, Gytha?’

  ‘Yes, Esme.’

  ‘Bring it in here, then. And you, Jason, you just get that forge hot.’

  ‘But if I nail iron to it I’ll—’

  ‘Did I say anything about iron?’

  The horn took a stone out of the wall a foot from Jason’s head. He gave in.

  ‘You’ll have to come in to keep it calm, then,’ he said. ‘I’ve never shod a stallion like this’n without two men and a boy a-hanging on to it.’