Granny, for once not the centre of attention as all horrified eyes were on Nanny and her sack, surveyed the other occupants of the coach.
The express stage went right over the Ramtops and all the way through the patchwork of little countries beyond. If it cost forty dollars just from Lancre, then it must have cost these people a lot more. What sort of folk spent the best part of two months’ wages just to travel fast and uncomfortably?
The thin man who sat clutching his bag was probably a spy, she decided. The fat man who’d volunteered the glass looked as if he sold things; he had the unpleasant complexion of someone who’d hit too many bottles but missed too many meals.
They were huddled together on their seat because the rest of it was occupied by a man of almost wizardly proportions. He didn’t appear to have woken up when the coach stopped. There was a handkerchief over his face. He was snoring with the regularity of a geyser, and looked as though the only worries he might have in the world were a tendency for small objects to gravitate towards him and the occasional tide.
Nanny Ogg continued to rummage around in her bag and, as was the case when she was preoccupied, her mouth had wired itself to her eyeballs without her brain intervening.
She was used to travelling by broomstick. Long distance ground travel was a novelty to her, so she’d prepared with some care.
‘. . .lessee now. . . book of puzzles for long journeys . . . cushion . . . foot powder . . . mosquito trap. . . phrase book. . . bag to be sick into. . . oh dear. . .’
The audience, which against all probability had managed to squeeze itself further away from Nanny during the litany, waited with horrified interest.
‘What?’ said Granny.
‘How often d’you reckon this coach stops?’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I should’ve gone before we left. Sorry. It’s the jolting. Anyone know if there’s a privy on this thing?’ she added brightly.
‘Er,’ said the probable spy, ‘we generally wait until the next stop, or-‘ He stopped. He had been about to add ‘there’s always the window’, which was a manly option on the bumpier rural stretches, but he stopped himself in the horrible apprehension that this ghastly old woman might seriously consider the possibility.
‘There’s Ohulan just a bit further on the road,’ said Granny, who was trying to doze. ‘You just wait.’
‘This coach doesn’t stop at Ohulan,’ said the spy helpfully.
Granny Weatherwax raised her head.
‘Up until now, that is,’ said the spy.
Mr Bucket was sitting in his office trying to make sense of the Opera House’s books.
They didn’t make any kind of sense. He reckoned he was as good as the next man at reading a balance-sheet, but these were to book-keeping what grit was to clockwork.
Seldom Bucket had always enjoyed opera. He didn’t understand it and never had, but he didn’t understand the ocean either and he enjoyed that, too. He’d looked upon the purchase as, well, something to do, a sort of working retirement. The offer had been too good to pass up. Things had been getting pretty tough in the wholesale cheese-and-milk-derivatives business, and he’d been looking forward to the quieter climes of the world of art.
The previous owners had put on some good operas. It was only a shame that their genius hadn’t run to bookkeeping as well. Money seemed to have been taken out of the accounts when anyone needed it. The financial-record system largely consisted of notes on torn bits of paper saying: ‘I’ve taken $30 to pay Q. See you Monday. R.’ Who was R? Who was Q? What was the money for? You wouldn’t get away with this sort of thing in the world of cheese.
He looked up as the door opened.
‘Ah, Salzella,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming. You don’t know who Q is, by any chance?’
‘No, Mr Bucket.’
‘Or R?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ Salzella pulled up a chair.
‘It’s taken me all morning, but I’ve worked out we pay more than fifteen hundred dollars a year for ballet shoes,’ said Bucket, waving a piece of paper in the air.
Salzella nodded. ‘Yes, they do rather go through them at the toes.’
‘I mean, it’s ridiculous! I’ve still got a pair of boots belonging to my father!’
‘But ballet shoes, sir, are rather more like foot gloves,’ Salzella explained.
‘You’re telling me! They cost seven dollars a pair and they last hardly any time at all! A few performances! There must be some way we can make a saving. . . ?’
14.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB’>Salzella gave his new employer a long, cool stare. ‘Possibly we could ask the girls to spend more time in the air?’ he said. ‘A few extra grands jetes?’
Bucket looked puzzled. ‘Would that work?’ he said suspiciously.
‘Well, their feet wouldn’t be on the ground for so long, would they?’ said Salzella, in the tones of one who knows for a fact that he’s much more intelligent than anyone else in the room.
‘Good point. Good point. Have a word with the ballet mistress, will you?’
‘Of course. I am sure she will welcome the suggestion. You may well have halved costs at a stroke.’
Bucket beamed.
‘Which is perhaps just as well,’ said Salzella. ‘There is, in fact, another matter that I’ve come to see you about. . .’
‘Yes?’
‘It is to do with the organ we had.’
‘Had? What do you mean, had?’ said Bucket, adding, ‘You’re going to tell me something expensive, are you? What have we got now?’
‘A lot of pipes and some keyboards,’ said Salzella. ‘Everything else has been smashed.’
‘Smashed? Who by?’
Salzella leaned back. He was not a man to whom amusement came easily, but he realized that he was rather enjoying this.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘when Mr Pnigeus and Mr Cavaille sold you this Opera House, did they mention anything. . . supernatural?’
Bucket scratched his head. ‘Well. . . yes. After I’d signed and paid. It was a bit of a joke. They said: “Oh, and by the way, people say there’s some man in evening dress who haunts the place, haha, ridiculous, isn’t it, these theatrical people, like children really, haha, but you may find it keeps them happy if you always keep Box Eight free on first nights, haha.” I remember that quite well. Handing over thirty thousand dollars concentrates the memory a bit. And then they rode off: Quite a fast carriage, now I come to think about it.’
‘Ah,’ said Salzella, and he almost smiled. ‘Well, now that the ink is dry, I wonder if I might fill you in on the fine detail. . .’
‘You make yourself useful, Esme Weatherwax,’ said the voice from the bushes, ‘by obligin’ me and findin’ any dock or burdock plants that might happen to be around out there, thank you very much.’
‘Herbs? What’re you plannin’ with them?’
‘I’m plannin’ to say, “Thank goodness, big leaves, just what I need.” ‘
Birds sang. The wind rattled the dried seed-heads of moor land flowers.
Granny Weatherwax poked in the ditches to see if there were any interesting herbs hereabouts.
High over the hills, a buzzard screamed and wheeled.
The coach stood by the side of the road, despite the fact that it should have been speeding along at least twenty miles away.
At last Granny grew bored, and sidled towards a clump of gorse bushes.
‘How’re you doing, Gytha?’
‘Fine, fine,’ said a muffled voice.
‘Only I reckon the coach driver is getting a bit impatient.’
‘You can’t hurry Nature,’ said Nanny Ogg.
‘Well, don’t blame me. You was the one who said it was too draughty on the broomsticks.’
Some distance from the bushes where Nanny Ogg was communing with Nature there was, placid under the autumn sky, a lake.
In the reeds, a swan was dying. Or was due to die. There was, however, an unforeseen snag.
Death sat down on the bank.
NOW LOOK, he said, I KNOW HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO GO. SWANS SING JUST ONCE, BEAUTIFULLY, BEFORE THEY DIE. THAT’S WHERE THE WORD ‘SWANSONG’ ORIGINATES. IT IS VERY MOVING. NOW, LET US TRY THIS AGAIN. . .
He produced a tuning fork from the shadowy recesses of his robe and twanged it on the side of his scythe.
THERE’S YOUR NOTE. . .
‘Uh-uh,’ said the swan, shaking its head.
WHY MAKE IT DIFFICULT?
‘I like it here,’ said the swan.
THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.
‘Did you know I can break a man’s arm with a blow of my wing?’
HOW ABOUT IF I GET YOU STARTED? DO YOU KNOW ‘MOONLIGHT BAY’?
‘That’s no more than a barbershop ditty! I happen to be a swan!’
‘LITTLE BROWN JUG’? Death cleared his throat. HA HA HA, HEE HEE HEE, LITTLE-