Maskerade d-18

by Terry David John Pratchett

  “That's right Mrs Ogg!”

  Nanny picked up one of the sheaves of paper. Her lips moved as she read the meticulous copperplate writing.

  “An opera about cats?” she said. “Never heard of an opera about cats…”

  She thought for a moment, and then added to herself But why not? It's a damn good idea. The lives of cats are just like operas, when you come to think about it.

  She leafed through the other piles. “Guys and Trolls? Hubwards Side Story? Miserable Les? Who's he? Seven Dwarfs for Seven Other Dwarfs? What're all these, Walter?”

  She sat down on the stool and pressed a few of the cracked yellow keys, which moved with an audible creak. There were a couple of large pedals under the harmonium. You pedalled these and that worked the bellows and these spongy keys produced something which was to organ music what 'poot' was to cursing.

  So this was where Wal… where the Ghost sat, thought Nanny, down under the stage, among the discarded wreckage of old performances; down under the huge windowless room where, night after night, music and songs and rampant emotion echoed back and forth and never escaped or entirely died away. The Ghost worked down here, with a mind as open as a well, and it filled up with opera. Opera went in at the ears, and something else came out of the mind.

  Nanny pumped the pedals a few times. Air hissed from inefficient seams. She tried a few notes. They were reedy. But, she considered, sometimes the old lie was true, and size really did not matter. It really was what you did with it that counted.

  Walter watched her expectantly.

  She took down another wad of paper and peered at the first page. But Walter leaned over and snatched at the script.

  “That one's not finished Mrs Ogg!”

  The Opera House was still in uproar. Half the audience had gone outside and the other half was hanging around in case further interesting events were going to transpire. The orchestra was in a huddle in the pit, preparing its request for a special Being Upset By A Ghost Allowance. The curtains were closed. Some of the chorus had stayed on stage; others had hurried off to take part in the chase. The air had the excited electric feel it gets when normal civilized life is temporarily short‑circuited.

  Agnes bounced frantically from rumour to rumour. The Ghost had been caught, and it was Walter Plinge. The Ghost had been caught by Walter Plinge. The Ghost had been caught by someone else. The Ghost had escaped. The Ghost was dead.

  There were arguments breaking out everywhere.

  “I still can't believe it was Walter! I mean, good grief… Walter?”

  “What about the show? We can't just stop! You never stop the show, not even if someone dies!”

  “Oh, we have stopped when people died…”

  “Yes, but only as long as it took to get the body off‑stage!”

  Agnes stepped back into the wings, and trod on something. “Sorry,” she said automatically.

  “It was only my foot,” said Granny Weatherwax. “So… how is life in the big city, Agnes Nitt?”

  Agnes turned. “Oh… hello, Granny…” she mumbled. “And I'm not Agnes here, thank you,” she added, a shade more defiantly.

  “It's a good job, is it, bein' someone else's voice?”

  “I'm doing what I want to do,” said Agnes. She drew herself up to her full width. “And you can't stop me!”

  “But you ain't part of it, are you?” said Granny conversationally. “You try, but you always find yourself watchin' yourself watchin' people, eh? Never quite believin' anything? Thinkin' the wrong thoughts?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Ah. Thought so.”

  “I have no intention of becoming a witch, thank you very much!”

  “Now, don't go getting upset just because you know it's going to happen. A witch you're going to be because a witch you are, and if you turn your back on him now then I don't know what's going to happen to Walter Plinge.”

  “He's not dead?”

  “No.”

  Agnes hesitated. “I knew he was the Ghost,” she began. “But then I saw he couldn't be.”

  “Ah,” said Granny. “Believed the evidence of your own eyes, did you? In a place like this?”

  “One of the stage‑hands just told me they chased him up on to the roof and then down into the street and beat him to death!”

  “Oh, well,” said Granny, “you'll never get anywhere if you believe what you hear. What do you know?”

  “What do you mean, what do I know?”

  “Don't try cleverness on me, miss.”

  Agnes looked at Granny's expression, and knew when to fold. “I know he's the Ghost,” she said.

  “Right.”

  “But I can see that he isn't.”

  “Yes?”

  “And I know… I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean any harm.”

  “Good. Well done. Walter might not know his right from his left, but he does know his right from his wrong.” Granny rubbed her hands together. “Well, we're already home and looking for a clean towel, eh?”

  “What? You haven't solved anything!”

  “ 'Course we have. We know that it wasn't Walter what done the murders, so now we just have to find out who it was. Easy.”

  “Where's Walter now?”

  “Nanny's got him somewhere.”

  “She's all by herself?”

  “I told you, she's got Walter.”

  “I meant… well, he's a bit strange.”

  “Only where it shows.”

  Agnes sighed, and started to say that it wasn't her problem. And realized it was useless even to try. The knowledge sat like a smug intruder in her mind. Whatever it was, it was her problem.

  “All right,” she said. “I'll help you if I can, because I'm here. But afterwards… that's it! Afterwards, you'll leave me alone. Promise?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Well… all right, then…” Agnes stopped. “Oh, no,” she said. “That was too easy. I don't trust you.”

  “Don't trust me?” said Granny. “You're saying you don't trust me?”

  “Yes. I don't. You'll find a way to wriggle around it.”

  “I never wriggle,” said Granny. “It's Nanny Ogg who thinks we ought to have a third witch. I reckon life's difficult enough without some girl cluttering up the place just because she thinks she looks good in a pointy hat.”

  There was a pause. Then Agnes said, “I'm not falling for that one, either. It's where you say I'm too stupid to be a witch and I say, oh no I'm not, and you end up winning again. I'd rather be someone else's voice than some old witch with no friends and having everyone frightened of me and being nothing more than just a bit cleverer than other people and not doing any real magic at all…”

  Granny put her head on one side.

  “Seems to me you're so sharp you might cut yourself,” she said. “All right. When it's all over, I'll let you go your own way. I won't stop you. Now show me the way to Mr Bucket's office…”

  Nanny smiled her jolly‑wrinkled‑old‑apple smile. “Now, you just hand it over, Walter,” she said. “No harm in letting me see it, is there? Not old Nanny.”

  “Can't see it till it's finished!”

  “Well, now,” said Nanny, hating herself for dropping the atom bomb, “I'm sure your mam wouldn't want to hear that you've been a bad boy, would she?”

  Expressions floated over Walter's waxen features as he struggled with several ideas at once. Finally, without a word, he thrust the bundle at her, his arms trembling with tension.

  “There's a good boy,” said Nanny.

  She glanced at the first few pages, and then moved them nearer to the light. “Hmm.”

  She treadled the harmonium for a while and played a few notes with her left hand. They represented most of the musical notes she knew how to read. It was a very simple little theme, such as might be picked out on the keyboard with one finger. “Hey…”

  Her lips moved as she read the narrative.

  “Well now, Walter,” she said, “isn't this a sort of op
era about a ghost who lives in an opera house?” She turned a page. “Very smart and debonair, he is. He's got a secret cave, I see…”

  She played another short riff. “Catchy music, too.”

  She read on, occasionally saying things like 'Well, well' and 'Lawks'. Every now and again she'd give Walter an appraising look.

  “I wonder why the Ghost wrote this, Walter?” she said, after a while. “Quiet sort of chap, ain't he? Put it all into his music.”

  Walter stared at his feet. “There's going to be a lot of trouble Mrs Ogg.”

  “Oh, me and Granny will sort it all out,” said Nanny.

  “It's wrong to tell lies,” said Walter.

  “Probably,” said Nanny, who'd never let it worry her up to now.

  “It wouldn't be right for our mum to lose her job Mrs Ogg.”

  “It wouldn't be right, no.”

  The feeling drifted over Nanny that Walter was trying to put across some sort of message. “Er… what sort of lies would it be wrong to tell, Walter?”

  Walter's eyes bulged. “Lies… about things you see Mrs Ogg! Even if you did see them!”

  Nanny thought it was probably time to present the Oggish point of view. “It's all right to tell lies if you don't think lies,” she said.

  “He said our mum would lose her job and I'd be locked up if I said Mrs Ogg!”

  “Did he? Which "he" was he?”

  “The Ghost Mrs Ogg!”

  “I reckon Granny ought to have a good look at you, Walter,” said Nanny. “I reckon your mind's all tangled up like a ball of string what's been dropped.” She pedalled the harmonium thoughtfully. “Was it the Ghost that wrote all this music, Walter?”

  “It's wrong to tell lies about the room with the sacks in it Mrs Ogg!”

  Ah, thought Nanny. “That'd be down here, would it?”

  “He said I wasn't to tell anyone!”

  “Who did?”

  “The Ghost Mrs Ogg!”

  “But you're—” Nanny began, and then tried another way. “Ah, but I ain't anyone,” she said. “Anyway, if you was to go to this room with the sacks and I was to follow you, that wouldn't be telling anyone, would it? It wouldn't be your fault if some ole woman followed you, would it?”

  Walter's face was an agony of indecision but, erratic though his thinking might have been, it was no match for Nanny Ogg's meretricious duplicity. He was up against a mind that regarded truth as a reference point but certainly not as a shackle. Nanny Ogg could think her way through a corkscrew in a tornado without touching the sides.

  “Anyway, it's all right if it's me,” she added for good measure. “In fact, he prob'ly meant to say "except for Mrs Ogg", only he forgot.”

  Slowly, Walter reached out and picked up a candle. Without saying a word he walked out of the door and into the damp darkness of the cellars.

  Nanny Ogg followed him, her boots making squelching noises in the mud.

  It didn't seem like much of a distance. As far as Nanny could work out they were no longer under the Opera House, but it was hard to be sure. Their shadows danced around them and they walked through other rooms, even more dark and dripping than the ones they'd been in. Walter stopped in front of a pile of timber that glistened with rot, and pulled a few of the spongy planks aside.

  There were some sacks neatly piled.

  Nanny kicked one, and it broke.

  In the flickering candlelight all that she could really see were sparkles of light as the cascade poured out, but there was no mistaking the gentle metallic scraping of lots of money. Lots and lots of money. Enough money to suggest very clearly that it belonged to either a thief or a publisher, and there didn't seem to be any books around.

  “What's this, Walter?”

  “It's the Ghost's money Mrs Ogg!”

  There was a square hole in the opposite corner of the room. Water glinted a few inches below. Beside the hole were half a dozen containers of various sorts — old biscuit tins, broken bowls and the like. There was a stick, or possibly a dead shrub, in each one.

  “And those, Walter? What are those?”

  “Rose bushes Mrs Ogg!”

  “Down here? But nothing could gr—”

  Nanny stopped.

  She squelched over to the pots. They'd been filled with muck scraped from the floor. The dead stems glistened with slime.

  Nothing could grow down here, of course. There was no light. Everything that grew needed something else to feed on. And…she moved the candle closer, and sniffed the fragrance. Yes. It was subtle, but it was there. Roses in darkness.

  “Well, my word, Walter Plinge,” she said. “Always one for the surprises, you are.”

  Books were piled on Mr Bucket's desk.

  “What you're doing is wrong, Granny Weatherwax,” said Agnes from the doorway.

  Granny glanced up. “Wrong as living other people's lives for them?” she said. “S' matter of fact, there's something even worse than that, which is living other people's lives for yourself. That kind of wrong?”

  Agnes said nothing. Granny Weatherwax couldn't know.

  Granny turned back to the books. “Anyway, this only looks wrong. Appearances is deceivin'. You just pay attention to watching the corridor, madam.”

  She riffled through the bits of torn envelope and scribbled notes that seemed to be the Opera House's equivalent of proper accounts. It was a mess. In fact, it was more than a mess. It was far too much of a mess to be a real mess, because a real mess has occasional bits of coherence, bits of what might be called random order. Rather, it was the kind of erratic mess that suggested that someone had set out to be messy.

  Take the account books. They were full of tiny rows and columns, but someone hadn't thought it worthwhile to invest in lined paper and had handwriting that wandered a bit. There were forty rows on the left‑hand side but only thirty‑six by the time they reached the other side of the page. It was hard to spot because of the way your eyes watered.

  “What are you doing?” said Agnes, tearing her gaze away from the corridor.

  “Amazin',” said Granny. “Some things is entered twice! And I reckon there's a page here where someone's added the month and taken away the time of day!”

  “I thought you didn't like books,” said Agnes.

  “I don't,” said Granny, turning a page. “They can look you right in the face and still lie. How many fiddle players are there in the band?”

  “I think there are nine violinists in the orchestra.”

  The correction appeared to pass unnoticed.

  “Well, there's a thing,” said Granny, without moving her head. “Seems that twelve of 'em are drawing wages, but three of 'em is over the page, so you mightn't notice.” She looked up and rubbed her hands happily. “Unless you've got a good memory, that is.”

  She ran a skinny finger down another erratic column. “What's a flying ratchet?”

  “I don't know!”

  “Says here "Repairs to flying ratchet, new springs for rotation cog assembly, and making good. Hundred and sixty dollars and sixty‑three pence." Hah!”

  She licked her finger and tried another page –

  “Even Nanny ain't this bad at numbers,” she said. “To be this bad at numbers you've got to be good. Hah! No wonder this place never makes any money. You might as well try to fill a sieve.”

  Agnes darted into the room. “There's someone coming!”

  Granny got up and blew out the lamp. “You get behind the curtains,” she commanded.

  “What're you going to do?”

  “Oh… I'll just have to make myself inconspicuous…”

  Agnes hurried across to the big window and turned to look at Granny, who was standing by the fireplace.

  The old witch faded. She didn't disappear. She merely slid into the background.

  An arm gradually became part of the mantelpiece. A fold of her dress was a piece of shadow. An elbow became the top of the chair behind her. Her face became one with a vase of faded flowers.

 
; She was still there, like the old woman in the puzzle picture they sometimes printed in the Almanack, where you could see the old woman or the young girl but not both at once, because one was made of the shadows of the other. Granny Weatherwax was standing by the fireplace, but you could see her only if you knew she was there.

  Agnes blinked. And there were just the shadows, the chair and the fire.

  The door opened. She ducked behind the curtains, feeling as conspicuous as a strawberry in a stew, certain that the sound of her heart would give her away.

  The door shut, carefully, with barely a click. Footsteps crossed the floor. A wooden scraping noise might have been a chair being moved slightly.

  A scratch and a hiss were the sound of a match, striking. A clink was the glass of the lamp, being lifted…

  All noise ceased.

  Agnes crouched, every muscle suddenly screaming with the strain. The lamp hadn't been lit — she'd have seen the light around the curtain.

  Someone out there was making no noise.

  Someone out there was suddenly suspicious.

  A floorboard squeaked verrrry slowwwly, as someone shifted their weight.

  She felt as if she was going to scream, or burst with the effort of silence. The handle of the window behind her, a mere point of pressure a moment ago, was trying seriously to become part of her life. Her mouth was so dry that she knew it'd creak like a hinge if she dared to swallow.

  It couldn't be anyone who had a right to be here. People who had a right to be in places walked around noisily.

  The handle was getting really personal.

  Try to think of something else…

  The curtain moved. Someone was standing on the other side of it.

  If her throat weren't so arid she might be able to scream.

  She could feel the presence through the cloth. Any moment now, someone was going to twitch the curtain aside.

  She leapt, or as close to a leap as was feasible — it was a kind of vertical lumber, billowing the curtain aside, colliding with a slim body behind it, and ending on the floor in a tangle of limbs and ripping velvet.

  She gulped air, and pressed down on the squirming bundle below her.