“Don’t remember this one,” said Carpenter the poacher. “Thought I knew all the paths around here.”
“That’s ‘cos you only ever sees ’em in the dark,” said Jason.
“Yeah, everyone knows ’tis your delight on a shining night,” said Thatcher the carter.
“Tis his delight every night,” said Jason.
“Hey,” said Baker the weaver, “we’re getting really good at this rude mechanism, ain’t we?”
“Let’s go right,” said Jason.
“Nah, it’s all briars and thorns that way.”
“All right, then, left then.”
“It’s all winding,” said Weaver.
“What about the middle road?” said Carter.
Jason peered ahead.
There was a middle track, hardly more than an animal path, which wound away under shady trees. Ferns grew thickly alongside it. There was a general green, rich, dark feel to it, suggested by the word “bosky”[22]
His blacksmith’s senses stood up and screamed.
“Not that way,” he said.
“Ah, come on,” said Weaver. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Goes up to the Dancers, that path does,” said Jason. “Me mam said no one was to go up to the Dancers ‘cos of them young women dancing round ’em in the nudd.”
“Yeah, but they’ve been stopped from that,” said Thatcher. “Old Granny Weatherwax put her foot down hard and made ’em put their drawers on.”
“And they ain’t to go there anymore, neither,” said Carter. “So it’ll be nice and quiet for the rehearsing.”
“Me mam said no one was to go there,” said Jason, a shade uncertainly.
“Yeah, but she probably meant . . . you know . . . with magical intent,” said Carter. “Nothing magical about prancing around in wigs and stuff.”
“Right,” said Thatcher. “And it’ll be really private.”
“And,” said Weaver, “if any young women fancies sneaking back up there to dance around without their drawers on, we’ll be sure to see ’em.”
There was a moment of absolute, introspective silence.
“I reckon,” said Thatcher, voicing the unspoken views of nearly all of them, “we owes it to the community.”
“We-ell,” said Jason, “me mam said . . .”
“Anyway, your mum’s a fine one to talk,” said Weaver. “My dad said that when he was young, your mum hardly ever had-”
“Oh, all right,” said Jason, clearly outnumbered. “Can’t see it can do any harm. We’re only actin’. It’s . . . it’s make-believe. It’s not as if it’s anything real. But no one’s to do any dancing. Especially, and I want everyone to be absolutely definite about this, the Stick and Bucket dance.”
“Oh, we’ll be acting all right,” said Weaver. “And keeping watch as well, o’course.”
“It’s our duty to the community,” said Thatcher, again.
“Make-believe is bound to be all right,” said Jason, uncertainly.
Clang boinng clang ding . . .
The sound echoed around Lancre.
Grown men, digging in their gardens, flung down their spades and hurried for the safety of their cottages . . .
Clang boinnng goinng ding . . .
Women appeared in doorways and yelled desperately for their children to come in at once . . .
. . . BANG buggrit Dong boinng . . .
Shutters thundered shut. Some men, watched by their frightened families, poured water on the fire and tried to stuff sacks up the chimney . . .
Nanny Ogg lived alone, because she said old people needed their pride and independence. Besides, Jason lived on one side, and he or his wife whatshername could easily be roused by means of a boot applied heavily to the wall, and Shawn lived on the other side and Nanny had got him to fix up a long length of string with some tin cans on it in case his presence was required. But this was only for emergencies, such as when she wanted a cup of tea or felt bored.
Bond drat clang . . .
Nanny Ogg had no bathroom but she did have a tin bath, which normally hung on a nail on the back of the privy. Now she was dragging it indoors. It was almost up the garden, after being bounced off various trees, walls, and garden gnomes on the way.
Three large black kettles steamed by her fireside. Beside them were half a dozen towels, the loofah, the pumice stone, the soap, the soap for when the first soap got lost, the ladle for fishing spiders out, the waterlogged rubber duck with the prolapsed squeaker, the bunion chisel, the big scrubbing brush, the small scrubbing brush, the scrubbing brush on a stick for difficult crevices, the banjo, the thing with the pipes and spigots that no one ever really knew the purpose of, and a bottle of Klatchian Nights bath essence, one drop of which could crinkle paint.
Bong clang slam . . .
Everyone in Lancre had learned to recognize Nanny’s pre-ablutive activities, out of self-defense.
“But it ain’t April!” neighbours told themselves, as they drew the curtains.
In the house just up the hill from Nanny Ogg’s cottage Mrs. Skindle grabbed her husband’s arm.
“The goat’s still outside!”
“Are you mad? I ain’t going out there! Not now!”
“You know what happened last time! It was paralysed all down one side for three days, man, and we couldn’t get it down off the roof!”
Mr. Skindle poked his head out of the door. It had all gone quiet. Too quiet.
“She’s probably pouring the water in,” he said.
“You’ve got a minute or two,” said his wife. “Go on, or we’ll be drinking yoghurt for weeks.”
Mr. Skindle took down a halter from behind the door, and crept out to where his goat was tethered near the hedge. It too had learned to recognize the bathtime ritual, and was rigid with apprehension.
There was no point in trying to drag it. Eventually he picked it up bodily.
There was a distant but insistent sloshing noise, and the bonging sound of a floating pumice stone bouncing on the side of a tin bath.
Mr. Skindle started to run.
Then there was the distant tinkle of a banjo being tuned.
The world held its breath.
Then it came, like a tornado sweeping across a prairie.
“AAaaaaeeeeeee-”
Three flowerpots outside the door cracked, one after the other. Shrapnel whizzed past Mr. Skindle’s ear.
“-wizzaaardsah staaafff has a knobontheend, knobontheend-”
He threw the goat through the doorway and leapt after it. His wife was waiting, and slammed the door shut behind him.
The whole family, including the goat, got under the table.
It wasn’t that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.
There had been plenty of singers whose high notes could smash a glass, but Nanny’s high C could clean it.
The Lancre Morris Men sat glumly on the turf, passing an earthenware jug between them. It had not been a good rehearsal.
“Don’t work, does it?” said Thatcher. “‘S’not funny, that I do know,” said Weaver. “Can’t see the king killing himself laughing at us playing a bunch of mechanical artisans not being very good at doin’ a play.”
“You’re just no good at it,” said Jason. “We’re sposed to be no good at it,” said Weaver. “Yeah, but you’re no good at acting like someone who’s ho good at acting,” said Tinker. “I don’t know how, but you ain’t. You can’t expect all the fine lords and ladies-”
A breeze blew over the moor, tasting of ice at midsummer.
“-to laugh at us not being any good at being no good at acting.”
“I don’t see what’s funny about a bunch of rude artisans trying to do a play anyway,” said Weaver.
Jason shrugged.
“It says all the gentry-”
A tang on the wind, the sharp tin taste of snow . . .
“-in Ankh-Morpork laughed at it for weeks and weeks,” he said. “It was on Broad Way for three months.”
“What’s Broad Way?”
“That’s where all the theatres are. The Dysk, Lord Wynkin’s Men, the Bearpit . . .”
“They’d laugh at any damn thing down there,” said Weaver. “Anyway, they all think we’re all simpletons up here. They all think we say oo-aah and sings daft folk songs and has three brain cells huddlin’ together for warmth ‘cos of drinking scumble all the time.”
“Yeah. Pass that jug.”
“Swish city bastards.”
“They don’t know what it’s like to be up to the armpit in a cow’s backside on a snowy night. Hah!”
“And there ain’t one of ’em that – what’re you talking about? You ain’t got a cow.”
“No, but I know what it’s like.”
“They don’t know what it’s like to get one wellie sucked off in a farmyard full of gyppoe and that horrible moment where you waves the foot around knowin’ that wherever you puts it down it’s going to go through the crust.”
The stoneware jug glugged gently as it was passed from hand to unsteady hand.