Wyrd Sisters tds-6

by Terry David John Pratchett

  'He done it!' she shouted triumphantly. 'We all seed 'im! He done it with a dagger!'

  The audience filed out, contented. It had been a good play on the whole, they decided, although not very easy to follow. But it had been a jolly good laugh when all the kings had run off, and the woman in black had jumped up and did all the shouting. That alone had been well worth the ha'penny admission.

  The three witches sat alone on the edge of the stage.

  'I wonder how they get all them kings and lords to come here and do this?' said Granny, totally unabashed. 'I'd have thought they'd been too busy. Ruling and similar.'

  'No,' said Magrat, wearily. 'I still don't think you quite understand.'

  'Well, I'm going to get to the bottom of it,' snapped Granny. She got back on to the stage and pulled aside the sacking curtains.

  'You!' she shouted. 'You're dead!'

  The luckless former corpse, who was eating a ham sandwich to calm his nerves, fell backwards off his stool.

  Granny kicked a bush. Her boot went right through it.

  'See?' she said to the world in general in a strangely satisfied voice. 'Nothing's real! It's all just paint, and sticks and paper at the back.'

  'May I assist you, good ladies?'

  It was a rich and wonderful voice, with every diphthong gliding beautifully into place. It was a golden brown voice. If the Creator of the multiverse had a voice, it was a voice such as this. If it had a drawback, it was that it wasn't a voice you could use, for example, for ordering coal. Coal ordered by this voice would become diamonds.

  It apparently belonged to a large fat man who had been badly savaged by a moustache. Pink veins made a map of quite a large city on his cheeks; his nose could have hidden successfully in a bowl of strawberries. He wore a ragged jerkin and holey tights with an aplomb that nearly convinced you that his velvet-and-vermine robes were in the wash just at the moment. In one hand he held a towel, with which he had clearly been removing the make-up that still greased his features.

  'I know you,' said Granny. 'You done the murder.' She looked sideways at Magrat, and admitted, grudgingly, 'Leastways, it looked like it.'

  'So glad. It is always a pleasure to meet a true connoisseur. Olwyn Vitoller, at your service. Manager of this band of vagabonds,' said the man and, removing his moth-eaten hat, he treated her to a low bow. It was less an obeisance than an exercise in advanced topology.

  The hat swerved and jerked through a series of complex arcs, ending up at the end of an arm which was now pointing in the direction of the sky. One of his legs, meanwhile, had wandered off behind him. The rest of his body sagged politely until his head was level with Granny's knees.

  'Yes, well,' said Granny. She felt that her clothes had grown a bit larger and much hotter.

  'I thought you was very good, too,' said Nanny Ogg. 'The way you shouted all them words so graciously. I could tell you was a king.'

  'I hope we didn't upset things,' said Magrat.

  'My dear lady,' said Vitoller. 'Could I begin to tell you how gratifying it is for a mere mummer to learn that his audience has seen behind the mere shell of greasepaint to the spirit beneath?'

  'I expect you could,' said Granny. 'I expect you could say anything, Mr Vitoller.'

  He replaced his hat and their eyes met in the long and calculating stare of one professional weighing up another. Vitoller broke first, and tried to pretend he hadn't been competing.

  'And now,' he said, 'to what do I owe this visit from three such charming ladies?'

  In fact he'd won. Granny's mouth fell open. She would not have described herself as anything much above 'handsome, considering'. Nanny, on the other hand, was as gummy as a baby and had a face like a small dried raisin. The best you could say for Magrat was that she was decently plain and well-scrubbed and as flat-chested as an ironing board with a couple of peas on it, even if her head was too well stuffed with fancies. Granny could feel something, some sort of magic at work. But not the kind she was used to.

  It was Vitoller's voice. By the mere process of articulation it transformed everything it talked about.

  Look at the two of them, she told herself, primping away like a couple of ninnies. Granny stopped her hand in the process of patting her own iron-hard bun, and cleared her throat meaningfully.

  'We'd like to talk to you, Mr Vitoller.' She indicated the actors, who were dismantling the set and staying well out of her way, and added in a conspiratorial whisper, 'Somewhere private.'

  'Dear lady, but of a certain,' he said. 'Currently I have lodgings in yonder esteemed watering hole.'

  The witches looked around. Eventually Magrat risked, 'You mean in the pub?'

  It was cold and draughty in the Great Hall of Lancre Castle, and the new chamberlain's bladder wasn't getting any younger. He stood and squirmed under the gaze of Lady Felmet.

  'Oh, yes,' he said. 'We've got them all right. Lots.'

  'And people don't do anything about them?' said the duchess.

  The chamberlain blinked. 'I'm sorry?' he said.

  'People tolerate them?'

  'Oh, indeed,' said the chamberlain happily. 'It's considered good luck to have a witch living in your village. My word, yes.'

  'Why?'

  The chamberlain hesitated. The last time he had resorted to a witch it had been because certain rectal problems had turned the privy into a daily torture chamber, and the jar of ointment she had prepared had turned the world into a nicer place.

  'They smooth out life's little humps and bumps,' he said.

  'Where I come from, we don't allow witches,' said the duchess sternly. 'And we don't propose to allow them here. You will furnish us with their addresses.'

  'Addresses, ladyship?'

  'Where they live. I trust your tax gatherers know where to find them?'

  'Ah,' said the chamberlain, miserably.

  The duke leaned forward on his throne.

  'I trust,' he said, 'that they do pay taxes?'

  'Not, exactly pay taxes, my lord,' said the chamberlain.

  There was silence. Finally the duke prompted, 'Go on, man.'

  'Well, it's more that they don't pay, you see. We never felt, that is, the old king didn't think... Well, they just don't.'

  The duke laid a hand on his wife's arm.

  'I see,' he said coldly. 'Very well. You may go.'

  The chamberlain gave him a brief nod of relief and scuttled crabwise from the hall.

  'Well!' said the duchess.

  'Indeed.'

  'That was how your family used to run a kingdom, was it? You had a positive duty to kill your cousin. It was clearly in the interests of the species,' said the duchess. 'The weak don't deserve to survive.'

  The duke shivered. She would keep on reminding him. He didn't, on the whole, object to killing people, or at least ordering them to be killed and then watching it happen. But killing a kinsman rather stuck in the throat or – he recalled – the liver.

  'Quite so,' he managed. 'Of course, there would appear to be many witches, and it might be difficult to find the three that were on the moor.'

  'That doesn't matter.'

  'Of course not.'

  'Put matters in hand.'

  'Yes, my love.'

  Matters in hand. He'd put matters in hand all right. If he closed his eyes he could see the body tumbling down the steps. Had there been a hiss of shocked breath, down in the darkness of the hall? He'd been certain they were alone. Matters in hand! He'd tried to wash the blood off his hand. If he could wash the blood off, he told himself, it wouldn't have happened. He'd scrubbed and scrubbed. Scrubbed till he screamed.

  Granny wasn't at home in public houses. She sat stiffly to attention behind her port-and-lemon, as if it were a shield against the lures of the world.

  Nanny Ogg, on the other hand, was enthusiastically downing her third drink and, Granny thought sourly, was well along that path which would probably end up with her usual dancing on the table, showing her petticoats and singing 'The Hedgehog Can
Never be Buggered at All'.

  The table was covered with copper coins. Vitoller and his wife sat at either end, counting. It was something of a race.

  Granny considered Mrs Vitoller as she snatched farthings from under her husband's fingers. She was an intelligent-looking woman, who appeared to treat her husband much as a sheepdog treats a favourite lamb. The complexities of the marital relationship were known to Granny only from a distance, in the same way that an astronomer can view the surface of a remote and alien world, but it had already occurred to her that a wife to Vitoller would have to be a very special woman with bottomless reserves of patience and organisational ability and nimble fingers.

  'Mrs Vitoller,' she said eventually, 'may I make so bold as to ask if your union has been blessed with fruit?'

  The couple looked blank.

  'She means—' Nanny Ogg began.

  'No, I see,' said Mrs Vitoller, quietly. 'No. We had a little girl once.'

  A small cloud hung over the table. For a second or two Vitoller looked merely human-sized, and much older. He stared at the small pile of cash in front of him.

  'Only, you see, there is this child,' said Granny, indicating the baby in Nanny Ogg's arms. 'And he needs a home.'

  The Vitollers stared. Then the man sighed.

  'It is no life for a child,' he said. 'Always moving. Always a new town. And no room for schooling. They say that's very important these days.' But his eyes didn't look away.

  Mrs Vitoller said, 'Why does he need a home?'

  'He hasn't got one,' said Granny. 'At least, not one where he would be welcome.'

  The silence continued. Then Mrs Vitoller said, 'And you, who ask this, you are by way of being his—?'

  'Godmothers,' said Nanny Ogg promptly. Granny was slightly taken aback. It never would have occurred to her.

  Vitoller played abstractly with the coins in front of him. His wife reached out across the table and touched his hand, and there was a moment of unspoken communion. Granny looked away. She had grown expert at reading faces, but there were times when she preferred not to.

  'Money is, alas, tight—' Vitoller began.

  'But it will stretch,' said his wife firmly.

  'Yes. I think it will. We should be happy to take care of him.'

  Granny nodded, and fished in the deepest recesses of her cloak. At last she produced a small leather bag, which she tipped out on to the table. There was a lot of silver, and even a few tiny gold coins.

  'This should take care of—' she groped – 'nappies and suchlike. Clothes and things. Whatever.'

  'A hundred times over, I should think,' said Vitoller weakly. 'Why didn't you mention this before?'

  'If I'd had to buy you, you wouldn't be worth the price.'

  'But you doh't know anything about us!' said Mrs Vitoller.

  'We don't, do we?' said Granny, calmly. 'Naturally we'd like to hear how he gets along. You could send us letters and suchlike. But it would not be a good idea to talk about all this after you've left, do you see? For the sake of the child.'

  Mrs Vitoller looked at the two old women.

  'There's something else here, isn't there?' she said. 'Something big behind all this?'

  Granny hesitated, and then nodded.

  'But it would do us no good at all to know it?'

  Another nod.

  Granny stood up as several actors came in, breaking the spell. Actors had a habit of filling all the space around them.

  'I have other things to see to,' she said. 'Please excuse me.'

  'What's his name?' said Vitoller.

  'Tom,' said Granny, hardly hesitating.

  'John,' said Nanny. The two witches exchanged glances. Granny won.

  'Tom John,' she said firmly, and swept out.

  She met a breathless Magrat outside the door.

  'I found a box,' she said. 'It had all the crowns and things in. So I put it in, like you said, right underneath everything.'

  'Good,' said Granny.

  'Our crown looked really tatty compared to the others!'

  'It just goes to show, doesn't it,' said Granny. 'Did anyone see you?'

  'No, everyone was too busy, but—' Magrat hesitated, and blushed.

  'Out with it, girl.'

  'Just after that a man came up and pinched my bottom.' Magrat went a deep crimson and slapped her hand over her mouth.

  'Did he?' said Granny. 'And then what?'

  'And then, and then—'

  'Yes?'

  'He said, he said—'

  'What did he say?'

  'He said, "Hallo, my lovely, what are you doing tonight?" '

  Granny ruminated on this for a while and then she said, 'Old Goodie Whemper, she didn't get out and about much, did she?'

  'It was her leg, you know,' said Magrat.

  'But she taught you all the midwifery and everything?'

  'Oh, yes, that,' said Magrat. 'I done lots.'

  'But—' Granny hesitated, groping her way across unfamiliar territory – 'she never talked about what you might call the previous.'

  'Sorry?'

  'You know,' said Granny, with an edge of desperation in her voice. 'Men and such.'

  Magrat looked as if she was about to panic. 'What about them?'

  Granny Weatherwax had done many unusual things in her time, and it took a lot to make her refuse a challenge. But this time she gave in.

  'I think,' she said helplessly, 'that it might be a good idea if you have a quiet word with Nanny Ogg one of these days. Fairly soon.'

  There was a cackle of laughter from the window behind them, a chink of glasses, and a thin voice raised in song: —with a giraffe, If you stand on a stool. But the hedgehog—' Granny stopped listening. 'Only not just now,' she added.

  The troupe got under way a few hours before sunset, their four carts lurching off down the road that led towards the Sto plains and the big cities. Lancre had a town rule that all mummers, mountebanks and other potential criminals were outside the gates by sundown; it didn't offend anyone really because the town had no walls to speak of, and no-one much minded if people nipped back in again after dark. It was the look of the thing that counted.

  The witches watched from Magrat's cottage, using Nanny Ogg's ancient green crystal ball.

  'It's about time you learned how to get sound on this thing,' Granny muttered. She gave it a nudge, filling the image with ripples.

  'It was very strange,' said Magrat. 'In those carts. The things they had! Paper trees, and all kinds of costumes, and—' she waved her hands – 'there was this great big picture of forn parts, with all temples and things all rolled up. It was beautiful.'

  Granny grunted.

  'I thought it was amazing the way all those people became kings and things, didn't you? It was like magic.'

  'Magrat Garlick, what are you saying? It was just paint and paper. Anyone could see that.'

  Magrat opened her mouth to speak, ran the ensuing argument through her head, and shut it again.

  'Where's Nanny?' she said.

  'She's lying out on the lawn,' said Granny. 'She felt a bit poorly.' And from outside came the sound of Nanny Ogg being poorly at the top of her voice.

  Magrat sighed.

  'You know,' she said, 'if we are his godmothers, we ought to have given him three gifts. It's traditional.'

  'What are you talking about, girl?'

  'Three good witches are supposed to give the baby three gifts. You know, like good looks, wisdom and happiness.' Magrat pressed on defiantly. 'That's how it used to be done in the old days.'

  'Oh, you mean gingerbread cottages and all that,' said Granny dismissively. 'Spinning wheels and pumpkins and pricking your finger on rose thorns and similar. I could never be having with all that.'

  She polished the ball reflectively.

  'Yes, but—' Magrat said. Granny glanced up at her. That was Magrat for you. Head full of pumpkins. Everyone's fairy godmother, for two pins. But a good soul, underneath it all. Kind to small furry animals. The sor
t of person who worried about baby birds falling out of nests.

  'Look, if it makes you any happier,' she muttered, surprised at herself. She waved her hands vaguely over the image of the departing carts. 'What's it to be – wealth, beauty?'

  'Well, money isn't everything, and if he takes after his father he'll be handsome enough,' Magrat said, suddenly serious. 'Wisdom, do you think?'

  'That's something he'll have to learn for himself,' said Granny.

  'Perfect eyesight? A good singing voice?' From the lawn outside came Nanny Ogg's cracked but enthusiastic voice telling the night sky that A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End.

  'Not important,' said Granny loudly. 'You've got to think headology, see? Not muck about with all this beauty and. wealth business. That's not important.'

  She turned back to the ball and gestured half-heartedly. 'You'd better go and get Nanny, then, seeing as there should be three of us.'

  Nanny was helped in, eventually, and had to have things explained to her.

  'Three gifts, eh?' she said. 'Haven't done one of them things since I was a gel, it takes me back – what're you doing?'

  Magrat was bustling around the room, lighting candles.

  'Oh, we've got to create the right magical ambience,' she explained. Granny shrugged, but said nothing, even in the face of the extreme provocation. All witches did their magic in their own way, and this was Magrat's house.

  'What're we going to give him, then?' said Nanny.

  'We was just discussing it,' said Granny.

  'I know what he'll want,' said Nanny. She made a suggestion, which was received in frozen silence.

  'I don't see what use that would be,' said Magrat, eventually. 'Wouldn't it be rather uncomfortable?'

  'He'll thank us when he grows up, you mark my words,' said Nanny. 'My first husband, he always said—'

  'Something a bit less physical is generally the style of things,' interrupted Granny, glaring at Nanny Ogg. 'There's no need to go and spoil everything, Gytha. Why do you always have to—'

  'Well, at least I can say that I—' Nanny began.

  Both voices faded to a mutter. There was a long edgy silence.

  'I think,' said Magrat, with brittle brightness, 'that perhaps it would be a good idea if we all go back to our little cottages and do it in our own way. You know. Separately. It's been a long day and we're all rather tired.'