Lords and Ladies (Discworld #14)

Lords and Ladies (Discworld #14) Page 44

“Well, there it is,” said Nanny. “Tempus fuggit.”

“Nanny?”

“Yes, love?”

“I don't understand. She was your friend but you don't seem . . . well. . . upset?”

“Well, I've buried a few husbands and one or two kiddies. You get the hang of it. Anyway, if she hasn't gone to a better place she'll damn well be setting out to improve it.”

“Nanny?”

“Yes, love?”

“Did you know anything about the letter?”

“What letter?”

“The letter to Verence.”

“Don't know anything about any letter to Verence.”

“He must have got it weeks before we got back. She must have sent it even before we got to Ankh-Morpork.”

Nanny Ogg looked, as far as Magrat could tell, genuinely blank.

“Oh, hell,” said Magrat. “I mean this letter.”

She fished it out of the breastplate.

“See?”

Nanny Ogg read:

“Dear sire. This is to inform youe that Magrate Garlick will bee retouning to Lancre on or aboute Blind Pig Tuesday. Shee is a Wet Hen but shee is clean and has got Good Teeth. If you wishes to marrie her, then starte arranging matters without delae, because if you just proposes and similar she will lede you a Dance because there is noone like Magrat for getting in the way of her own life. She does not Knoe her own Mind. You aere Kinge and you can doe what you like. You muste present her with a Fate Accompli. PS. I hear there is talk aboute making witches pay tax, no kinges of Lancre has tried this for many a Year, you could profit from their example. Yrs. in good health, at the moment. A FRIEND (MSS).”

The ticking of the clock stitched the blanket of silence.

Nanny Ogg turned to look at it.

“She arranged it all!” said Magrat. “You know what Verence is like. I mean, she hardly disguised who she was, did she? And I got back and it was all arranged-”

“What would you have done if nothing had been arranged?” said Nanny.

Magrat looked momentarily taken aback.

“Well, I would . . . I mean, if he had . . . I'd-”

“You'd be getting married today, would you?” said Nanny, but in a distant voice, as if she was thinking about something else.

“Well, that depends on-”

“You want to, don't you?”

“Well, yes, of course, but-”

“That's nice, then,” said Nanny, in what Magrat thought of as her nursery voice.

“Yes, but she pushed me on one side and shut me up in the castle and I got so wound up-”

“You were so angry that you actually stood Up to the Queen. You actually laid hands on her,” said Nanny. “Well done. The old Magrat wouldn't have done that, would she? Esme could always see the real thing. Now nip out of the back door and look at the log pile, there's a love.”

“But I hated her and hated her and now she's dead!”

“Yes, dear. Now go and tell Nanny about the log pile.”

Magrat opened her mouth to frame the words “I happen to be very nearly queen” but decided not to. Instead she graciously went outside and looked at the log pile.

“It's quite high,” she said, coming back and blowing her nose. “Looks like it's just been stacked.”

And she wound up the clock yesterday,“ said Nanny. ”And the tea caddy's half full, I just looked."

“Well?”

“She wasn't sure,” said Nanny. “Hmm.” She opened the envelope addressed to her. It was larger and flatter than the one holding the will, and contained a single piece of card.

Nanny read it, and let it drop on to the table.

“Come on,” she said. “We ain't got much time!”

“What's the matter?”

“And bring the sugar bowl!”

Nanny wrenched open the door and hurried toward her broomstick.

“Come on!”

Magrat picked up the card. The writing was familiar. She'd seen it several times before, when calling on Granny Weatherwax unexpectedly.

It said: I ATE'NT DEAD.

“Halt! Who goes there?”

“What're you doing on guard with your arm in a sling, Shawn?”

“Duty calls. Mum.”

“Well, let us in right now.”

“Are you Friend or Foe, Mum?”

“Shawn, this is almost-Queen Magrat here with me, all right?”

“Yes, but you've got to-”

“Right now!”

“Oooaaaww, Mum!”

Magrat tried to keep up with Nanny as she scurried through the castle.

“The wizard was right. She was dead, you know. I don't blame you for hoping, but I can tell when people are dead.”

“No, you can't. I remember a few years ago you came running down to my house in tears and it turned out she was just off Borrowing. That's when she started using the sign.”

“But-”

“She wasn't sure what was going to happen,” said Nanny. “That's good enough for me.”

“Nanny-”

“You never know until you look,” said Nanny Ogg, expounding her own Uncertainty Principle.

Nanny kicked open the doors to the Great Hall.

“What's all this?”

Ridcully got up from his chair, looking embarrassed.

“Well, it didn't seem right to leave her all alone-”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Nanny, gazing at the solemn tableau.

“Candles and lilies. I bet you pinched 'em yourself, out of the garden. And then you all shut her away indoors like this.”

“Well-”

"And no one even thought to leave a damn window

open! Can't you hear them?"

“Hear what?” Nanny looked around hurriedly and picked up a silver candlestick. “No!”

Magrat snatched it out of her hand. “This happens to be,” winding her arm back, “very nearly,” taking aim, “my castle-”

The candlestick flew up, turning end over end, and hit a big stained glass window right in the centre.

Fresh sunlight extruded down to the table, visibly moving in the Disc's slow magical field. And down it, like marbles down a chute, the bees cascaded.

The swarm settled on the witch's head, giving the impression of a very dangerous wig.

“What did you-” Ridcully began.

“She's going to swank about this for weeks,” said Nanny. “No one's ever done it with bees. Their mind's everywhere, see? Not just in one bee. In the whole swarm.”

“What are you-”

Granny Weatherwax's fingers twitched.

Her eyes flickered. Very slowly, she sat up. She focused on Magrat and

Nanny Ogg with some difficulty, and said:

“I wantzzz a bunzzch of flowerszz, a pot of honey, and someone to szzzting.”

“I brung the sugar bowl, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg.

Granny eyed it hungrily, and then looked at the bees that were taking off from her head like planes from a stricken carrier.

“Pour a dzzrop of water on it, then, and tip it out on the table for them.”

She stared triumphantly at their faces as Nanny Ogg bustled off.

“I done it with beezzz! No one can do it with beezzz, and I done it! You endzzz up with your mind all flying in different directionzzz! You got to be good to do it with beezzz!”

Nanny Ogg sloshed the bowl of makeshift syrup across the table. The swarm descended.

“You're alive?” Ridcully managed.

“That's what a univerzzity education doezz for you,” said Granny, trying to massage some life into her arms. “You've only got to be sitting up and talking for five minutzz and they can work out you're alive.”

Nanny Ogg handed her a glass of water. It hovered in the air for a moment and then crashed to the floor, because Granny had tried to grasp it with her fifth leg.

“Zzorry.”

“I knew you wasn't certain!” said Nanny.

“Czertain? Of courze I waz certain! Never in any doubt whatsoever.”

Magrat thought about the will.

“You never had a moment's doubt?”

Granny Weatherwax had the grace not to look her in the eye. Instead, she rubbed her hands together.

“What's been happening while I've been away?”

“Well,” said Nanny, “Magrat stood up to the-”

“Oh, I knew she'd do that. Had the wedding, have you?”

“Wedding?” The rest of them exchanged glances.

“Of course not!” said Magrat. “Brother Perdore of the Nine Day Wonderers was going to do it and he was knocked out cold by an elf, and anyway people are all-”

“Don't let's have any excuses,” said Granny briskly. “Anyway, a senior wizard can conduct a service at a pinch, ain't that right?”

“I, I, I think so,” said Ridcully, who was falling behind a bit in world events.

“Right. A wizard's only a priest without a god and a damp handshake,” said Granny

“But half the guests have run away!” said Magrat.

“We'll round up some more,” said Granny

“Mrs. Scorbic will never get the wedding feast done in time!”

“You'll have to tell her to,” said Granny.

“The bridesmaids aren't here!”

“We'll make do.”

“I haven't got a dress!”

“What's that you've got on?”

Magrat looked down at the stained chain-mail, the mud-encrusted breastplate, and the few damp remnants of white silk that hung over them like a ragged tabard.

“Looks good to me,” said Granny “Nanny'll do your hair.”

Magrat reached up instinctively, removed the winged helmet, and patted her hair. Bits of twigs and fragments of heather had twisted themselves in it with comb-breaking complexity It never looked good for five minutes together at the best of times; now it was a bird's nest.

“I think I'll leave it,” she said.

Granny nodded approvingly

“That's the way of it,” she said. “It's not what you've got that matters, it's how you've got it. Well, we're just about ready, then.”

Nanny leaned toward her and whispered.

“What? Oh, yes. Where's the groom?”

“He's a bit muzzy. Not sure what happened,” said Magrat.

“Perfectly normal,” said Nanny, “after a stag night.”

There were difficulties to overcome:

“We need a Best Man.”

“Ook.”

“Well, at least put some clothes on.”

Mrs. Scorbic the cook folded her huge pink arms.

“Can't be done,” she said firmly.

“I thought perhaps just some salad and quiche and some light-” Magrat said, imploringly.

The cook's whiskery chin stuck out firmly.

“Them elves turned the whole kitchen upside down,” she said. “It's going to take me days to get it straight. Anyway, everyone knows raw vegetables are bad for you, and I can't be having with them eggy pies.”

Magrat looked beseechingly at Nanny Ogg; Granny Weatherwax had wandered off into the gardens, where she was getting a tendency to stick her nose in flowers right out of her system.

“Nothin' to do with me,” said Nanny. “It's not my kitchen, dear.”

“No, it's mine. I've been cook here for years,” said Mrs. Scorbic, “and I knows how things should be done, and I'm not going to be ordered around in my own kitchen by some chit of a girl.”