Maskerade d-18

by Terry David John Pratchett

DAMN.

  “Thought you'd got me there, didn't you,” said the swan. “Thought you'd tricked me, eh? Thought I might unthinkingly give you a couple of bars of the Pedlar's Song from Lohenshaak, eh?”

  I DON'T KNOW THAT ONE.

  The swan took a deep, laboured breath.

  “That's the one that goes ‘Schneide meinen eigenen Hals‑’”

  THANK YOU, said Death. The scythe moved.

  “Bugger!”

  A moment later the swan stepped out of its body and ruffled fresh but slightly transparent wings.

  “Now what?” it said.

  THAT'S UP TO YOU. IT'S ALWAYS UP TO YOU.

  Mr Bucket leaned back in his creaky leather chair with his eyes shut until his director of music had finished.

  “So,” Bucket said. “Let me see if I've got this right. There's this Ghost. Every time anyone loses a hammer in this place, it's been stolen by the Ghost. Every time someone cracks a note, it's because of the Ghost. But also, every time someone finds a lost object, it's because of the Ghost. Every time someone has a very good scene, it must be because of the Ghost. He sort of comes with the building, like the rats. Every so often someone sees him, but not for long because he comes and goes like a… well, a Ghost. Apparently we let him use Box Eight for free on every first‑night performance. And you say people like him?”

  “ "Like" isn't quite the right word,” said Salzella. “It would be more correct to say that… well, it's pure superstition, of course, but they think he's lucky. Thought he was, anyway.”

  And you wouldn't understand a thing about that, would you, you coarse little cheesemonger, he added to himself. Cheese is cheese. Milk goes rotten naturally. You don't have to make it happen by having several hundred people wound up until their nerves go twang…

  “Lucky,” said Bucket flatly.

  “Luck is very important,” said Salzella, in a voice in which pained patience floated like ice cubes. “I imagine that temperament is not an important factor in the cheese business?”

  “We rely on rennet,” said Bucket.

  Salzella sighed. “Anyway, the company feel that the Ghost is… lucky. He used to send people little notes of encouragement. After a really good performance, sopranos would find a box of chocolates in their dressing-room, that sort of thing. And dead flowers, for some reason.”

  “Dead flowers?”

  “Well, not flowers at all, as such. Just a bouquet of dead rose‑stems with no roses on them. It's something of a trademark of his. It's considered lucky.”

  “Dead flowers are lucky?”

  “Possibly. Live flowers, certainly, are terribly bad luck on stage. Some singers won't even have them in their dressing-room. So… dead flowers are safe, you might say. Odd, but safe. And it didn't worry people because everyone thought the Ghost was on their side. At least, they did. Until about six months ago.”

  Mr Bucket shut his eyes again. “Tell me,” he said.

  “There have been… accidents.”

  “What kind of accidents?”

  “The kind of accidents that you prefer to call… accidents.”

  Mr Bucket's eyes stayed closed. “Like… the time when Reg Plenty and Fred Chiswell were working late one night up on the curdling vats and it turned out Reg had been seeing Fred's wife and somehow—” Bucket swallowed — “somehow he must have tripped, Fred said, and fallen—”

  “I am not familiar with the gentlemen concerned but… that kind of accident. Yes.”

  Bucket sighed. “That was some of the finest Farmhouse Nutty we ever made.”

  “Do you want me to tell you about our accidents?”

  “I'm sure you're going to.”

  “A seamstress stitched herself to the wall. A deputy stage manager was found stabbed with a prop sword. Oh, and you wouldn't like me to tell you what happened to the man who worked the trapdoor. And all the lead mysteriously disappeared from the roof, although personally I don't think that was the work of the Ghost.”

  “And everyone… calls these… accidents?”

  “Well, you wanted to sell your cheese, didn't you? I can't imagine anything that would depress the house like news that dead bodies are dropping like flies out of the flies.”

  He took an envelope out of his pocket and placed it on the table.

  “The Ghost likes to leave little messages,” he said. “There was one by the organ. A scenery painter spotted him and….nearly had an accident.”

  Bucket sniffed the envelope. It reeked of turpentine.

  The letter inside was on a sheet of the Opera House's own notepaper. In neat, copperplate writing, it said:

  Ahahahahaha! Ahahahaha! Aahahaha!

  BEWARE!!!!!

  Yrs Sincerely,

  The Opera Ghost

  “What sort of person,” said Salzella patiently, “sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man. Look, at least let's search the building. The cellars go on for ever. I'll need a boat—”

  “A boat? In the cellar?”

  “Oh. Didn't they tell you about the sub‑basement?”

  Bucket smiled the bright, crazed smile of a man who was nearing double exclamation marks himself.

  “No,” he said. “They didn't tell me about the subbasement. They were too busy not telling me that someone goes around killing the company. I don't recall anyone saying "Oh, by the way, people are dying a lot, and incidentally there's a touch of rising damp‑" ”

  “They're flooded.”

  “Oh, good!” said Bucket. “What with? Buckets of blood?”

  “Didn't you have a look?”

  “They said the cellars were fine!”

  “And you believed them?”

  “Well, there was rather a lot of champagne…”

  Salzella sighed.

  Bucket took offence at the sigh. “I happen to pride myself that I am a good judge of character,” he said. “Look a man deeply in the eye and give him a firm handshake and you know everything about him.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Salzella.

  “Oh, blast… Senor Enrico Basilica will be here the day after tomorrow. Do you think something might happen to him?”

  “Oh, not much. Cut throat, perhaps.”

  “What? You think so?”

  “How should I know?”

  “What do you want me to do? Close the place? As far as I can see it doesn't make any money as it is! Why hasn't anyone told the Watch?”

  “That would be worse,” said Salzella. “Big trolls in rusty chainmail tramping everywhere, getting in everyone's way and asking stupid questions. They'd close us down.”

  Bucket swallowed. “Oh, we can't have that,” he said. “Can't have them… putting everyone on edge.”

  Salzella sat back. He seemed to relax a little. “On edge? Mr Bucket,” he said, “this is opera. Everyone is always on edge. Have you ever heard of a catastrophe curve, Mr Bucket?”

  Seldom Bucket did his best. “Well, I know there's a dreadful bend in the road up by—”

  “A catastrophe curve, Mr Bucket, is what opera runs along. Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong, Mr Bucket. It works because of hatred and love and nerves. All the time. This isn't cheese. This is opera. If you wanted a quiet retirement, Mr Bucket, you shouldn't have bought the Opera House. You should have done something peaceful, like alligator dentistry.”

  Nanny Ogg was easily bored. But, on the other hand, she was also easy to amuse.

  “Certainly an interestin' way to travel,” she said. “You do get to see places.”

  “Yes,” said Granny. “Every five miles, it seems to me.”

  “Can't think what's got into me.”

  “I shouldn't think the horses have managed to get faster'n a walk all morning.”

  They were, by now, alone except for the huge snoring man. The other two had got out and joined the travellers on top.

 
; The main cause of this was Greebo. With a cat's unerring instinct for people who dislike cats he'd leapt heavily into their laps and given them the 'young masser back on de ole plantation' treatment. And he'd treadled them into submission and then settled down and gone to sleep, claws gripping not sufficiently to draw blood but definitely to suggest that this was an option should the person move or breathe. And then, when he was sure they were resigned to the situation, he'd started to smell.

  No one knew where it came from. It was not associated with any known orifice. It was just that, after five minutes' doze, the air above Greebo had a penetrating smell of fermented carpets.

  He was now trying it out on the very large man. It wasn't working. At last Greebo had found a stomach too big for him. Also, the continuing going up and down was beginning to make him feel ill.

  The snores reverberated around the coach.

  “Wouldn't like to come between him and his pudding,” said Nanny Ogg.

  Granny was staring out of the window. At least, her face was turned that way, but her eyes were focused on infinity.

  “Gytha?”

  “Yes, Esme?”

  “Mind if I ask you a question?”

  “You don't normally ask if I mind,” said Nanny.

  “Doesn't it ever get you down, the way people don't think properly?”

  Oh‑oh, thought Nanny. I reckon I got her out just in time. Thank goodness for literature.

  “How d'you mean?” she said.

  “I means the way they distracts themselves.”

  “Can't say I ever really thought about it, Esme.”

  “Like…s'pose I was to say to you, Gytha Ogg, your house is on fire, what's the first thing you'd try to take out?”

  Nanny bit her lip. “This is one of them personality questions, ain't it?” she said.

  “That's right.”

  “Like, you try to guess what I'm like by what I say…”

  “Gytha Ogg, I've known you all my life, I knows what you're like. I don't need to guess. But answer me, all the same.”

  “I reckon I'd take Greebo.”

  Granny nodded.

  “ 'Cos that shows I've got a warm and considerate nature,” Nanny went on.

  “No, it shows you're the kind of person who tries to work out what the right answer's supposed to be,” said Granny. “Untrustworthy. That was a witch's answer if ever I heard one. Devious.”

  Nanny looked proud.

  The snores changed to a blurt‑blurt noise and the handkerchief quivered.

  “…treacle pudding, with lots of custard…”

  “Hey, he just said something,” said Nanny.

  “He talks in his sleep,” said Granny Weatherwax. “He's been doing it on and off.”

  “I never heard him!”

  “You were out of the coach.”

  “Oh.”

  “At the last stop he was going on about pancakes with lemon,” said Granny. “And mashed potatoes with butter.”

  “Makes me feel hungry just listening to that,” said Nanny. “I've got a pork pie in the bag somewhere—”

  The snoring stopped abruptly. A hand came up and moved the handkerchief aside. The face beyond was friendly, bearded and small. It gave the witches a shy smile which turned inexorably towards the pork pie.

  “Want a slice, mister?” said Nanny. “I've got some mustard here, too.”

  “Oo, would you, dear lady?” said the man, in a squeaky voice. “Don't know when I last had a pork pie — oh, dear…”

  He grimaced as if he'd just said something wrong, and then relaxed.

  “Got a bottle of beer if you want a drop, too,” said Nanny. She was one of those women who enjoy seeing people eat almost as much as eating itself.

  “Beer?” said the man. “Beer? You know, they don't let me drink beer. Hah, it's supposed to be the wrong ambience. I'd give anything for a pint of beer—”

  “Just a "thank you" would do,” said Nanny, passing it over.

  “Who's this "they" to whom you refers?” said Granny.

  “ 'S my fault really,” said the man, through a faint spray of pork crumbs. “Got caught up, I suppose…”

  There was a change in the sounds from outside. The lights of a town were going past and the coach was slowing down.

  The man forced the last of the pie into his mouth and washed it down with the dregs of the beer.

  “Oo, lovely,” he said. Then he leaned back and put the handkerchief over his face.

  He raised a corner. “Don't tell anyone I spoke to you,” he said, “but you've made a friend of Henry Slugg.”

  “And what do you do, Henry Slugg?” said Granny, carefully.

  “I'm… I'm on the stage.”

  “Yes. We can see,” said Nanny Ogg.

  “No, I meant—”

  The coach stopped. Gravel crunched as people climbed down. The door was pulled open.

  Granny saw a crowd of people peering excitedly through the doorway, and reached up automatically to straighten her hat. But several hands reached out for Henry Slugg, who sat up, smiled nervously, and let himself be helped out. Several people also shouted out a name, but it wasn't the name of Henry Slugg.

  “Who's Enrico Basilica?” said Nanny Ogg.

  “Don't know,” said Granny. “Maybe he's the person Mr Slugg's afraid of.”

  The coaching inn was a run‑down shack, with only two bedrooms for guests. As helpless old ladies travelling alone, the witches got one, simply because all hell would have been let loose if they hadn't.

  Mr Bucket looked pained.

  “I may just be a big man in cheese to you,” he said, “you may think I'm just some hard‑headed businessman who wouldn't know culture if he found it floating in his tea, but I have been a patron of the opera here and elsewhere for many years. I can hum nearly the whole of—”

  “I am sure you've seen a lot of opera,” said Salzella. “But… how much do you know about production?”

  “I've been behind the scenes in lots of theatres—”

  “Oh, theatre,” said Salzella. “Theatre doesn't even approach it. Opera isn't theatre with singing and dancing. Opera's opera. You might think a production like Lohenshaak is full of passion, but it's a sandpit of toddlers compared to what goes on behind the scenes. The singers all loathe the sight of one another, the chorus despises the singers, they both hate the orchestra, and everyone fears the conductor; the staff on one prompt side won't talk to the staff on the opposite prompt side, the dancers are all crazed from hunger in any case, and that's only the start of it, because what is really—”

  There was a series of knocks at the door. They were painfully irregular, as if the knocker were having to concentrate quite hard.

  “Come in, Walter,” said Salzella.

  Walter Plinge shuffled in, a pail dangling at the end of each arm. “Come to fill your coalscuttle Mr Bucket!”

  Bucket waved a hand vaguely, and turned back to the director of music. “You were saying?”

  Salzella stared at Walter as the man carefully piled lumps of coal in the scuttle, one at a time.

  “Salzella?”

  “What? Oh. I'm sorry… what was I saying?”

  “Something about it being only the start?”

  “What? Oh. Yes. Yes… you see, it's fine for actors. There's plenty of parts for old men. Acting's something you can do all your life. You get better at it. But when your talent is singing or dancing… Time creeps up behind you, all the…” He fumbled for a word, and settled lamely for “Time. Time is the poison. You watch backstage one night and you'll see the dancers checking all the time in any mirror they can find for that first little imperfection. You watch the singers. Everyone's on edge, everyone knows that this might be their last perfect night, that tomorrow might be the beginning of the end. That's why everyone worries about luck, you see? All the stuff about live flowers being unlucky, you remember? Well, so's green. And real jewellery worn on stage. And real mirrors on stage. And whistling on stage. And peeking a
t the audience through the main curtains. And using new makeup on a first night. And knitting on stage, even at rehearsals. A yellow clarinet in the orchestra is very unlucky, don't ask me why. And as for stopping a performance before its proper ending, well, that's worst of all. You might as well sit under a ladder and break mirrors.”

  Behind Salzella, Walter carefully placed the last lump of coal on the pile in the scuttle and dusted it carefully.

  “Good grief,” said Bucket; at last. “I thought it was tough in cheese.”

  He waved a hand at the pile of papers and what passed for the accounts. “I paid thirty thousand for this place,” he said. “It's in the centre of the city! Prime site! I thought it was hard bargaining!”

  “They'd have probably accepted twenty‑five.”

  “And tell me again about Box Eight. You let this Ghost have it?”

  “The Ghost considers it is his for every first night, yes.”

  “How does he get in?”

  “No one knows. We've searched and searched for secret entrances…”

  “He really doesn't pay?”

  No.

  “It's worth fifty dollars a night!”

  “There will be trouble if you sell it,” said Salzella.

  “Good grief, Salzella, you're an educated man! How can you sit there so calmly and accept this sort of madness? Some creature in a mask has the run of the place, gets a prime Box all to himself, kills people, and you sit there saying there will be trouble?”

  “I told you: the show must go on.”

  “Why? We never said "the cheese must go on"! What's so special about the show going on?”

  Salzella smiled. “As far as I understand it,” he said, “the… power behind the show, the soul of the show, all the effort that's gone into it, call it what you will… it leaks out and spills everywhere. That's why they burble about "the show must go on". It must go on. But most of the company wouldn't even understand why anyone should ask the question.”

  Bucket glared at the pile of what passed for the Opera House's financial records.

  “They certainly don't understand book‑keeping! Who does the accounts?”

  “All of us, really,” said Salzella.

  “All of you?”