‘”Five for silver . . . six for gold . . .”‘ she said, half to herself.
‘It’s “five for heaven, six for hell”,’ Nanny called up.
‘I can just reach it, anyway. . .’
The bough broke. There were plenty of others below it, but they merely served as points of interest on the way down. The last one flipped Agnes into a holly bush.
Nanny took the invitation from her out flung hand. Rain had made the ink run, but the word ‘Weatherwax’ was still very readable. She scratched at the gold edging with her thumb.
‘Too much gold,’ she said. ‘Well, that explains the invite. I told you them birds will steal anything that glitters.’
‘I’m not hurt at all,’ said Agnes pointedly. ‘The holly quite cushioned my fall.’
‘I’ll wring their necks,’ said Nanny. The magpies
in the trees around the cottage screamed at her.
‘I think I may have dislocated my hat, however,’ said Agnes, pulling herself to her feet. But it was useless angling for sympathy in a puddle, so she gave up. ‘All right, we’ve found the invitation. It was all a terrible mistake. No one’s fault. Now let’s find Granny.’
‘Not if she don’t want to be found,’ said Nanny, rubbing the edge of the card thoughtfully.
‘You can do Borrowing. Even if she left early, some creatures will have seen. her-‘
‘I don’t Borrow, as a rule,’ said Nanny firmly. ‘I ain’t got Esme’s self-discipline. I gets . . . involved. I was a rabbit for three whole days until our Jason went and fetched Esme and she brought me back. Much longer and there wouldn’t have been a me to come back.’
‘Rabbits sound dull.’
‘They have their ups and downs.’
‘All right, then, have a look in the buoy’s glass ball,’ said Agnes. ‘You’re good at that, Magrat told me.’ Across the clearing a crumbling brick fell out of the cottage’s chimney.
‘Not here, then,’ said Nanny, with some reluctance. ‘It’s giving me the willies- Oh no, as if we didn’t have enough . . . What’s he doing here?’
Mightily Oats was advancing through the wood. He walked awkwardly, as city people do when traversing real, rutted, leaf-mouldy, twig-strewn soft, and had the concerned look of someone who was expecting to be attacked at any moment by owls or beetles.
In his strange black and white clothing he looked like a human magpie himself.
The magpies screamed from the trees.
‘ “Seven for a secret never to be told,”‘ said Agnes.
‘ “Seven’s a devil, his own sel’,”‘ said Nanny darkly. ‘You’ve got your rhyme, I’ve got mine.’
When Oats saw the witches he brightened up very slightly and blew his nose at them.
‘What a waste of skin,’ muttered Nanny.
‘Ah, Mrs Ogg . . . and Miss Nitt,’ said Oats, inching around some mud. ‘Er . . . I trust I find you well?’
‘Up till now,’ said Nanny.
‘I had, er, hoped to see Mrs Weatherwax.’
For a moment the only sound was the chattering of the ravens.
‘Hoped?’ said Agnes.
‘Mrs Weatherwax?’ said Nanny.
‘Er, yes. It is part of my . . . I’m supposed to . . . one of the things we . . . Well, I heard she might be ill, and visiting the elderly and infirm is part, er, of our pastoral duties . . . Of course I realize that technically I have no pastoral duties, but still, while I’m here . . .’
Nanny’s face was a picture, possibly one painted by an artist with a very strange sense of humour.
‘I’m really sorry she ain’t here,’ she said, and Agnes knew she was being altogether honest and absolutely nasty.
‘Oh dear. I was, er, going to give her some . . . I was going . . . er . . . Is she well, then?’
‘I’m sure she’d be all the better for a visit from you,’ said Nanny, and once again there was a strange, curvy sort of truth to this. ‘It’d be the sort of thing she’d talk about for days. You can come back any time you want.’
Oats looked helpless. ‘Then I suppose I’d better, er, be getting back to my, er, tent,’ he said. ‘May I accompany you ladies down to the town? There are, er, some dangerous things in the woods. . .’
‘ We got broomsticks,’ said Nanny firmly. The priest looked crestfallen, and Agnes made a decision.
‘A broomstick,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk you-.I mean, you can walk me back. If you like.’
The priest looked relieved. Nanny sniffed. There was a certain Weatherwax quality to the sniff.
‘Back at my place, then. An’ no dilly-dallyin’,’ she said.
‘I don’t dilly-dally,’ said Agnes.
‘Just see you don’t start,’ said Nanny, and went to find her broomstick.
Agnes and the priest walked in embarrassed silence for a while. At last Agnes said, ‘How’s the headache?’
‘Oh, much better, thank you. It went away. But her majesty was kind enough to give me some pills anyway.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Agnes. She ought to have given him a needle! Look at the size of that boil! said Perdita, one of nature’s born squeezers. Why doesn’t he do something about it?
‘Er . . . you don’t like me very much, do you?’ said Oats.
‘I’ve hardly met you.’ She was becoming aware of an embarrassing draughtiness in the nether regions.
‘A lot of people don’t like me as soon as they’ve met me,’ said Oats.
‘I suppose that saves time,’ said Agnes, and cursed. Perdita had got through on that one, but Oats didn’t seem to have noticed. He sighed.
‘I’m afraid I have a bit of a difficulty with people,’ he went on. ‘I fear I’m just not cutout for pastoral work.’
Don’t get involved with this twerp, said Perdita. But Agnes said, ‘You mean sheep and so on?’
‘It all seemed a lot clearer at college,’ said Oats, who like many people seldom paid much attention to what others said when he was unrolling his miseries, ‘but here, when I tell people some of the more accessible stories from the Book Of Om they say things like, “That’s not right, mushrooms wouldn’t grow in the desert,” or, “That’s a stupid way to run a vineyard.” Everyone here is so very . . . literal.’
Oats coughed. There seemed to be something preying on his mind. ‘Unfortunately, the Old Book Of Om is rather unyielding on the subject of witches,’ he said.
‘Really.’
‘Although having studied the passage in question in the original Second Omnian IV text, I have advanced the rather daring theory that the actual word in question translates more accurately as -cockroaches”.’
‘Yes?’
‘Especially since it goes on to say that they can be killed by fire or in “traps of treacle”. It also says later on that they bring lascivious dreams.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Agnes. ‘All you’re getting is a walk home.’
To her amazement, and Perdita’s crowing delight, he blushed as red as she ever did.
‘Er, er, the word in question in that passage might just as easily be read in context as `boiled lobsters”,’ he said hurriedly.
‘Nanny Ogg says Omnians used to burn witches,’ said Agnes.
‘We used to burn practically everybody,’ said Oats gloomily. ‘Although some witches did get pushed into big barrels of treacle, I believe.’
He had a boring voice, too. He did appear, she had to admit, to be a boring person. It was almost too perfect a presentation, as if he was trying to make himself seem boring. But one thing had piqued Agnes’s curiosity.
‘Why did you come to visit Granny Weatherwax?’
‘Well, everyone speaks very . . . highly of her,’ said Oats, suddenly picking his words like a man pulling plums from a boiling pot. ‘And they said she hadn’t turned up last night, which was very strange. And I thought it must be hard for an old lady living by herself. And. . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I understand she’s quite old and it’s never too late to consider the state of your immortal soul,’ said Oats. ‘Which she must have, of course.’
Agnes gave him a sideways look. ‘She’s never mentioned it,’ she said.
‘You probably think I’m foolish.’
‘I just think you are an amazingly lucky man, Mr Oats.’
On the other hand . . . here was someone who’d been told about Granny Weatherwax, and had still walked through these woods that scared him stiff to see her, even though she was possibly a cockroach or a boiled lobster. No one in Lancre ever came to see Granny unless they wanted something. Oh, sometimes they came with little presents (because one day they’d want something again), but they generally made sure she was out first. There was more to Mr Oats than met the eye. There had to be.
A couple of centaurs burst out of the bushes ahead of them and cantered away down the path. Oats grabbed a tree.