The visitor sighed.
” ‘The caged whale knows nothing of the mighty deeps,’ ” he said. “If it makes you any happier.”
” ‘The ill-built tower trembles mightily at a butterfly’s passage.’ ”
The supplicant grabbed the bars of the window, pulled himself up to it, and hissed: “Now let us in, I’m soaked.”
There was another damp pause.
“These deeps … did you say mighty or nightly?”
“Mighty, I said. Mighty deeps. On account of being, you know, deep. It’s me, Brother Fingers.”
“It sounded like nightly to me,” said the invisible doorkeeper cautiously.
“Look, do you want the bloody book or not? I don’t have to do this. I could be at home in bed.”
“You sure it was mighty?”
“Listen, I know how deep the bloody deeps are all right,” said Brother Fingers urgently. “I knew how mighty they were when you were a perishing neophyte. Now will you open this door?”
“Well . . . all right.”
There was the sound of bolts sliding back. Then the voice said, “Would you mind giving it a push? The Door of Knowledge Through Which the Untutored May Not Pass sticks something wicked in the damp.”
Brother Fingers put his shoulder to it, forced his way through, gave Brother Doorkeeper a dirty look, and hurried within.
The others were waiting for him in the Inner Sanctum, standing around with the sheepish air of people not normally accustomed to wearing sinister hooded black robes. The Supreme Grand Master nodded at him.
“Brother Fingers, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Supreme Grand Master.”
“Do you have that which you were sent to get?”
Brother Fingers pulled a package from under his robe.
“Just where I said it would be,” he said. “No problem.”
“Well done, Brother Fingers.”
“Thank you, Supreme Grand Master.”
The Supreme Grand Master rapped his gavel for attention. The room shuffled into some sort of circle.
“I call the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren to order,” he intoned. “Is the Door of Knowledge sealed fast against heretics and knowlessmen?”
“Stuck solid,” said Brother Doorkeeper. “It’s the damp. I’ll bring my plane in next week, soon have it-”
“All right, all right,” said the Supreme Grand Master testily. “Just a yes would have done. Is the triple circle well and truly traced? Art all here who Art Here? And it be well for an knowlessman that he should not be here, for he would be taken from this place and his gaskin slit, his moules shown to the four winds, his welchet torn asunder with many hooks and his figgin placed upon a spike yes what is it?”
“Sorry, did you say Elucidated Brethren?”
The Supreme Grand Master glared at the solitary figure with its hand up.
“Yea, the Elucidated Brethren, guardian of the sacred knowledge since a time no man may wot of-”
“Last February,” said Brother Doorkeeper helpfully. The Supreme Grand Master felt that Brother Doorkeeper had never really got the hang of things.
“Sorry. Sorry. Sorry,” said the worried figure. “Wrong society, I’m afraid. Must have taken a wrong turning. I’ll just be going, if you’ll excuse me . . .”
“And his figgin placed upon a spike,” repeated the Supreme Grand Master pointedly, against a background of damp wooden noises as Brother Doorkeeper tried to get the dread portal open. “Are we quite finished? Any more knowlessmen happened to drop in on their way somewhere else?” he added with bitter sarcasm. “Right. Fine. So glad. I suppose it’s too much to ask if the Four Watchtowers are secured? Oh, good. And the Trouser of Sanctity, has anyone bothered to shrive it? Oh, you did. Properly? I’ll check, you know … all right. And have the windows been fastened with the Red Cords of Intellect, in accordance with ancient prescription? Good. Now perhaps we can get on with it.”
With the slightly miffed air of one who has run their finger along a daughter-in-law’s top shelf and found against all expectation that it is sparkling clean, the Grand Master got on with it.
What a shower, he told himself. A bunch of incompetents no other secret society would touch with a ten-foot Sceptre of Authority. The sort to dislocate their fingers with even the simplest secret handshake.
But incompetents with possibilities, nevertheless. Let the other societies take the skilled, the hopefuls, the ambitious, the self-confident. He’d take the whining resentful ones, the ones with a bellyful of spite and bile, the ones who knew they could make it big if only they’d been given the chance. Give him the ones in which the floods of venom and vindictiveness were dammed up behind thin walls of ineptitude and low-grade paranoia.
And stupidity, too. They’ve all sworn the oath, he thought, but not a man jack of ’em has even asked what a figgin is.
“Brethren,” he said. “Tonight we have matters of profound importance to discuss. The good governance, nay, the very future of Ankh-Morpork lies in our hands.”
They leaned closer. The Supreme Grand Master felt the beginnings of the old thrill of power. They were hanging on his words. This was a feeling worth dressing up in bloody silly robes for.
“Do we not well know that the city is in thrall to corrupt men, who wax fat on their ill-gotten gains, while better men are held back and forced into virtual servitude?”
“We certainly do!” said Brother Doorkeeper vehemently, when they’d had time to translate this mentally. “Only last week, down at the Bakers’ Guild, I tried to point out to Master Critchley that-”
It wasn’t eye contact, because the Supreme Grand Master had made sure the Brethren’s hoods shrouded their faces in mystic darkness, but nevertheless he managed to silence Brother Doorkeeper by dint of sheer outraged silence.
“Yet it was not always thus,” the Supreme Grand Master continued. “There was once a golden age, when those worthy of command and respect were justly rewarded. An age when Ankh-Morpork wasn’t simply a big city but a great one. An age of chivalry. An age when-yes, Brother Watchtower?”
A bulky robed figure lowered its hand. “Are you talking about when we had kings?”
“Well done, Brother,” said the Supreme Grand Master, slightly annoyed at this unusual evidence of intelligence. “And-”
“But that was all sorted out hundreds of years ago,” said Brother Watchtower. “Wasn’t there this great battle, or something? And since then we’ve just had the ruling lords, like the Patrician.”
“Yes, very good, Brother Watchtower.”
“There aren’t any more kings, is the point I’m trying to make,” said Brother Watchtower helpfully.
“As Brother Watchtower says, the line of-”
“It was you talking about chivalry that give me the clue,” said Brother Watchtower.
“Quite so, and-”
“You get that with kings, chivalry,” said Brother Watchtower happily. “And knights. And they used to have these-”
“However,” said the Supreme Grand Master sharply, “it may well be that the line of the kings of Ankh is not as defunct as hitherto imagined, and that progeny of the line exists even now. Thus my researches among the ancient scrolls do indicate.”
He stood back expectantly. There didn’t seem to be the effect he’d expected, however. Probably they can manage ‘defunct’, he thought, but I ought to have drawn the line at ‘progeny’.
Brother Watchtower had his hand up again.
“Yes?”
“You saying there’s some sort of heir to the throne hanging around somewhere?” said Brother Watch-tower.
“This may be the case, yes.”
“Yeah. They do that, you know,” said Brother Watchtower knowledgeably. “Happens all the time. You read about it. Skions, they’re called. They go lurking around in the distant wildernesses for ages, handing down the secret sword and birthmark and so forth from generation to generation. Then just when the old kingdom needs them, they turn up and turf out any usurpers that happen to be around. And then there’s general rejoicing.”
The Supreme Grand Master felt his own mouth drop open. He hadn’t expected it to be as easy as this.
“Yes, all right,” said a figure the Supreme Grand Master knew to be Brother Plasterer. “But so what? Let’s say a skion turns up, walks up to the Patrician, says ‘What ho, I’m king, here’s the birthmark as per spec, now bugger off’. What’s he got then? Life expectancy of maybe two minutes, that’s what.”
“You don’t listen, ” said Brother Watchtower. “The thing is, the skion has to arrive when the kingdom is threatened, doesn’t he? Then everyone can see, right? Then he gets carried off to the palace, cures a few people, announces a half-holiday, hands round a bit of treasure, and Bob’s your uncle.”
“He has to marry a princess, too,” said Brother Doorkeeper. ‘ ‘On account of him being a swineherd.”
They looked at him.
“Who said anything about him being a swineherd?” said Brother Watchtower. “I never said he was a swineherd. What’s this about swineherds?”
“He’s got a point, though,” said Brother Plasterer. “He’s generally a swineherd or a forester or similar, your basic skion. It’s to do with being in wossname. Cognito. They’ve got to appear to be of, you know, humble origins.”