Lords And Ladies tds-14

by Terry David John Pratchett

  "Bursaaar!"

  —until the Bursar appeared.

  In fact it happened so often that the Bursar, a natural neurovore[6], frequently found that he'd got up and dressed himself in his sleep several minutes before the bellow. On this occasion he was upright and fully clothed and halfway to the door before his eyes snapped open.

  Ridcully never wasted time on small talk. It was always large talk or nothing.

  "Yes, Archchancellor?" said the Bursar, glumly.

  The Archchancellor removed his hat.

  "What about this, then?" he demanded.

  "Um, um, um . . . what, Archchancellor?"

  "This, man! This!"

  Close to panic, the Bursar stared desperately at the top of Ridcully's head.

  "The what? Oh. The bald spot?"

  "I have not got a bald spot!"

  "Um, then-"

  "I mean it wasn't there yesterday!"

  "Ah. Well. Um." At a certain point something always snapped inside the Bursar, and he couldn't stop himself. "Of course these things do happen and my grandfather always swore by a mixture of honey and horse manure, he rubbed it on every day-"

  "I'm not going bald!"

  A tic started to dance across the Bursar's face. The words started to come out by themselves, without the apparent intervention of his brain.

  "-and then he got this device with a glass rod and, and, and you rubbed it with a silk cloth and-"

  "I mean it's ridiculous! My family have never gone bald, except for one of my aunts!"

  "-and, and, and then he'd collect morning dew and wash his head, and, and, and-"

  Ridcully subsided. He was not an unkind man.

  "What're you taking for it at the moment?" he murmured.

  "Dried, dried, dried, dried," stuttered the Bursar.

  "The old dried frog pills, right?"

  "R-r-r-r."

  "Left-hand pocket?"

  "R-r-r-r."

  "OK. . . right. . . swallow. . ."

  They stared at one another for a moment.

  The Bursar sagged.

  "M-m-much better now, Archchancellor, thank you."

  "Something's definitely happening. Bursar. I can feel it in my water."

  "Anything you say, Archchancellor."

  "Bursar?"

  "Yes, Archchancellor?"

  "You ain't a member of some secret society or somethin', are you?"

  "Me? No, Archchancellor."

  "Then it'd be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head."

  "Know him?" said Granny Weatherwax.

  Nanny Ogg knew everyone in Lancre, even the forlorn thing on the bracken.

  "It's William Scrope, from over Slice way," she said. "One of three brothers. He married that Palliard girl, remember? The one with the air-cooled teeth?"

  "I hope the poor woman's got some respectable black clothes," said Granny Weatherwax.

  "Looks like he's been stabbed," said Nanny. She turned the body over, gently but firmly. Corpses as such didn't worry her. Witches generally act as layers-out of the dead as well as midwives; there were plenty of people in Lancre for whom Nanny Ogg's face had been the first and last thing they'd ever seen, which had probably made all the bit in the middle seem quite uneventful by comparison.

  "Right through," she said. "Stabbed right through. Blimey who'd do a thing like that?"

  Both the witches turned to look at the stones.

  "I don't know what, but I knows where it come from," said Granny.

  Now Nanny Ogg could see that the bracken all around the stones was indeed well trodden down, and quite brown.

  "I'm going to get to the bottom of this," said Granny.

  "You'd better not go into-"

  "I knows exactly where I should go, thank you."

  There were eight stones in the Dancers. Three of them had names. Granny walked around the ring until she reached the one known as the Piper.

  She removed a hatpin from among the many that riveted her pointy hat to her hair and held it about six inches from the stone. Then she let it go, and watched what happened.

  She went back to Nanny.

  "There's still power there," she said. "Not much, but the ring is holding."

  "But who'd be daft enough to come up here and dance around the stones?" said Nanny Ogg, and then, as a treacherous thought drifted across her mind, she added, "Magrat's been away with us the whole time."

  "We shall have to find out," said Granny, setting her face in a grim smile. "Now help me up with the poor man."

  Nanny Ogg bent to the task.

  "Coo, he's heavy. We could've done with young Magrat up here."

  "No. Flighty," said Granny Weatherwax. "Head easily turned."

  "Nice girl, though."

  "But soppy. She thinks you can lead your life as if fairy stories work and folk songs are really true. Not that I don't wish her every happiness."

  "Hope she does all right as queen," said Nanny.

  "We taught her everything she knows," said Granny Weatherwax.

  "Yeah," said Nanny Ogg, as they disappeared into the bracken. "D'you think. . . maybe. . . ?"

  "What?"

  "D'you think maybe we ought to have taught her everything we know?"

  "It'd take too long."

  "Yeah, right."

  It took a while for letters to get as far as the Archchancellor. The post tended to be picked up from the University gates by anyone who happened to be passing, and then left lying on a shelf somewhere or used as a pipe lighter or a bookmark or, in the case of the Librarian, as bedding.

  This one had only taken two days, and was quite intact apart from a couple of cup rings and a bananary fingerprint. It arrived on the table along with the other post while the faculty were at breakfast. The Dean opened it with a spoon.

  "Anyone here know where Lancre is?" he said.

  "Why?" said Ridcully, looking up sharply.

  "Some king's getting married and wants us to come."

  "Oh dear, oh dear," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "Some tinpot king gets wed and he wants us to come?"

  "It's up in the mountains," said the Archchancellor, quietly "Good trout fishin' in those parts, as I recall. My word. Lancre. Good grief. Hadn't thought about the place in years. You know, there's glacier lakes up there where the fish've never seen a rod. Lancre. Yes."

  "And it's far too far," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  Ridcully wasn't listening. "And there's deer. Thousands of head of deer. And elk. Wolves all over the place. Mountain lions too, I shouldn't wonder. I heard that Ice Eagles have been seen up there again, too."

  His eyes gleamed.

  "There's only half a dozen of 'em left," he said.

  Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, he kept them rare.

  "It's the back of beyond," said the Dean. "Right off the edge of the map."

  "Used to stay with my uncle up there, in the holidays," said Ridcully, his eyes misty with distance. "Great days I had up there. Great days. The summers up there . . . and the sky's a deeper blue than anywhere else, it's very . . . and the grass. . . and. . ."

  He returned abruptly from the landscapes of memory.

  "Got to go, then," he said. "Duty calls. Head of state gettin' married. Important occasion. Got to have a few wizards there. Look of the thing. Nobblyess obligay."

  "Well, I'm not going," said the Dean. "It's not natural, the countryside. Far too many trees. Never could stand it."

  "The Bursar could do with an outing," said Ridcully. "Seems a bit jumpy just lately, can't imagine why." He leaned forward to look along the High Table. "Bursaaar!"

  The Bursar dropped his spoon into his oatmeal.

  "See what I mean?" said Ridcully. "Bundle o' nerves the whole time. I WAS SAYING YOU COULD DO WITH SOME FRESH AIR, BURSAR." He nudged the Dean heavily. "Hope he's not going off his rocker, poor fella," he said, in what he chose to believe was a whisper. "Spends too much time indoors, if you get my drift."


  The Dean, who went outdoors about once a month, shrugged his shoulders.

  "I EXPECT YOU'D LIKE A LITTLE TIME AWAY FROM THE UNIVERSITY, EH?" said the Archchancellor, nodding and grimacing madly. "Peace and quiet? Healthy country livin'?"

  "I, I, I, I should like that very much, Archchancellor," said the Bursar, hope rising in his face like an autumn mushroom.

  "Good man. Good man. You shall come with me," said Ridcully, beaming.

  The Bursar's expression froze.

  "Got to be someone else, too," said Ridcully. "Volunteers, anyone?"

  The wizards, townies to a man, bent industriously over their food. They always bent industriously over their food in any case, but this time they were doing it to avoid catching Ridcully's eye.

  "What about the Librarian?" said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, throwing a random victim to the wolves.

  There was a sudden babble of relieved agreement.

  "Good choice," said the Dean. "Just the thing for him. Countryside. Trees. And. . . and. . . trees."

  "Mountain air," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  "Yes, he's been looking peaky lately," said the Reader in Invisible Writings[7].

  "It'd be a real treat for him," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

  "Home away from home, I expect," said the Dean. "Trees all over the place."

  They all looked expectantly at the Archchancellor.

  "He doesn't wear clothes," said Ridcully. "And he goes 'ook' all the time."

  "He does wear the old green robe thing," said the Dean.

  "Only when he's had a bath."

  Ridcully rubbed his beard. In fact he quite liked the Librarian, who never argued with him and always kept himself in shape, even if that shape was a pear shape. It was the right shape for an orang-utan.

  The thing about the Librarian was that no one noticed he was an orang-utan anymore, unless a visitor to the University happened to point it out. In which case someone would say, "Oh, yes. Some kind of magical accident, wasn't it? Pretty sure it was something like that. One minute human, next minute an ape. Funny thing, really . . . can't remember what he looked like before. I mean, he must have been human, I suppose. Always thought of him as an ape, really. It's more him."

  And indeed it had been an accident among the potent and magical books of the University library that had as it were bounced the Librarian's genotype down the evolutionary tree and back up a different branch, with the significant difference that now he could hang on to it upside down with his feet.

  "Oh, all right," said the Archchancellor. "But he's got to wear something during the ceremony,' if only for the sake of the poor bride."

  There was a whimper from the Bursar.

  All the wizards turned toward him.

  His spoon landed on the floor with a small thud. It was wooden. The wizards had gently prevented him from having metal cutlery since what was now known as the Unfortunate Incident At Dinner.

  "A-a-a-a," gurgled the Bursar, trying to push himself away from the table.

  "Dried frog pills," said the Archchancellor. "Someone fish 'em out of his pocket."

  Wizards didn't rush this. You could find anything in a wizard's pocket-peas, unreasonable things with legs, small experimental universes, anything. . .

  The Reader in Invisible Writings craned to see what had unglued his colleague.

  "Here, look at his porridge," he said.

  There was a perfect round depression in the oatmeal.

  "Oh dear, another crop circle," said the Dean.

  The wizards relaxed.

  "Damn things turning up everywhere this year," said the Archchancellor. He hadn't taken his hat off to eat the meal. This was because it was holding down a poultice of honey and horse manure and a small mouse-powered electrostatic generator he'd got those clever young fellas in the High Energy Magic research building to knock together for him, clever fellas they were, one day he might even understand half of what they were always gabblin' on about. . .

  In the meantime, he'd keep his hat on.

  "Particularly strong, too," said the Dean. "The gardener told me yesterday they're playing merry hell with the cabbages."

  "I thought them things only turned up out in fields and things," said Ridcully. "Perfectly normal natural phenomenon."

  "If there is a suitably high flux level, the inter-continuum pressure can probably overcome quite a high base reality quotient," said the Reader in Invisible Writings.

  The conversation stopped. Everyone turned to look at this most wretched and least senior member of the staff.

  The Archchancellor glowered.

  "I don't even want you to begin to start explainin' that," he said. "You're probably goin' to go on about the universe bein' a rubber sheet with weights on it again, right?"

  "Not exactly a-"

  "And the word 'quantum' is hurryin' toward your lips again," said Ridcully.

  "Well, the-"

  "And 'continuinuinuum' too, I expect," said Ridcully.

  The Reader in Invisible Writings, a young wizard whose name was Ponder Stibbons, sighed deeply.

  "No, Archchancellor, I was merely pointing out-"

  "It's not wormholes again, is it?"

  Stibbons gave up. Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red rag to a bu-was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it.

  It was very hard, being a reader in Invisible Writings.

  "I reckon you'd better come too," said Ridcully.

  "Me, Archchancellor?"

  "Can't have you skulking around the place inventing millions of other universes that're too small to see and all the rest of that continuinuinuum stuff," said Ridcully. "Anyway, I shall need someone to carry my rods and crossbo — my stuff," he corrected himself.

  Stibbons stared at his plate. It was no good arguing. What he had really wanted out of life was to spend the next hundred years of it in the University, eating big meals and not moving much in between them. He was a plump young man with a complexion the colour of something that lives under a rock. People were always telling him to make something of his life, and that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to make a bed of it.

  "But, Archchancellor," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, "it's still too damn far."

  "Nonsense," said Ridcully. "They've got that new turnpike open all the way to Sto Helit now. Coaches every Wednesday, reg'lar. Bursaaar! Oh, give him a dried frog pill, someone . . . Mr. Stibbons, if you could happen to find yourself in this universe for five minutes, go and arrange some tickets. There. All sorted out, right?"

  Magrat woke up.

  And knew she wasn't a witch anymore. The feeling just crept over her, as part of the normal stock-taking that any body automatically does in the first seconds of emergence from the pit of dreams: arms: 2, legs: 2, existential dread: 58%, randomised guilt: 94%, witchcraft level: 00.00.

  The point was, she couldn't remember ever being anything else. She'd always been a witch. Magrat Garlick, third witch, that was what she was. The soft one.

  She knew she'd never been much good at it. Oh, she could do some spells and do them quite well, and she was good at herbs, but she wasn't a witch in the bone like the old ones. They made sure she knew it.

  Well, she'd just have to learn queening. At least she was the only one in Lancre. No one'd be looking over her shoulder the whole time, saying things like "You ain't holding that sceptre right'."

  Right. . .

  Someone had stolen her clothes in the night.

  She got up in her nightshirt and hopped over the cold flagstones to the door. She was halfway there when it opened of its own accord.

  She recognised the small dark girl that came in, barely visible behind a stack of linen. Most people in Lancre knew everyone else.

  "Millie Chillum?"

  The linen bobbed a curtsy.

  "Yes'm?"

  Magrat lifted up part of the stack.

  "It's me, Magrat," she said. "Hello."<
br />
  "Yes'm." Another bob.

  "What's up with you, Millie?"

  "Yes'm." Bob, bob.

  "I said it's me. You don't have to look at me like that."

  "Yes'm."

  The nervous bobbing continued. Magrat found her own knees beginning to jerk in sympathy but as it were behind the beat, so that as she was bobbing down she overtook the girl bobbing up.

  "If you say 'yes'm' again, it will go very hard with you," she managed, as she went past.

  "Y-right, your majesty, m'm."

  Faint light began to dawn.

  "I'm not queen yet, Millie. And you've known me for twenty years," panted Magrat, on the way up.

  "Yes'm. But you're going to be queen. So me mam told me I was to be respectful," said Millie, still curtsying nervously

  "Oh. Well. All right, then. Where are my clothes?"

  "Got 'em here, your pre-majesty."

  "They're not mine. And please stop going up and down all the time. I feel a bit sick."

  "The king ordered 'em from Sto Helit special, m'm."

  "Did he, eh? How long ago?"

  "Dunno, m'm."

  He knew I was coming home, thought Magrat. How? What's going on here?

  There was a good deal more lace than Magrat was used to, but that was, as it were, the icing on the cake. Magrat normally wore a simple dress with not much underneath it except Magrat. Ladies of quality couldn't get away with that kind of thing. Millie had been provided with a sort of technical diagram, but it wasn't much help.

  They studied it for some time.

  "This is a standard queen outfit, then?"

  "Couldn't say, m'm. I think his majesty just sent 'em a lot of money and said to send you everything." They spread out the bits on the floor.

  "Is this the pantoffle?"

  Outside, on the battlements, the guard changed. In fact he changed into his gardening apron and went off to hoe the beans. Inside, there was considerable sartorial discussion.

  "I think you've got it up the wrong way, m'm. Which bit's the farthingale?"

  "Says here Insert Tabbe A into Slotte B. Can't find slotte B."

  "These're like saddlebags. I'm not wearing these. And this thing?"