Nanny glanced at the other two and shrugged.
‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘If we get a wiggle on we can be back at the broomsticks before dark.’
‘Is that all?’ said Magrat.
‘Things come to an end,’ said Granny. ‘I’m going to rest up here and then I’m on my way. Plenty of places to go.’
Now get her to tell you the truth, said Perdita. Agnes bit down. Ought had been bad enough.
‘So we’ll be getting along,’ said Nanny. ‘Come on.’
‘But-‘
‘But me no buts,’ said Nanny. ‘As Granny would have said.’
‘That’s right!’ said Granny, lying back.
As they filed back into the caves Agnes heard Perdita start counting.
Magrat patted her pockets. Nanny patted her knickerlegs.
Magrat said, ‘Oh, I must have le-‘
‘Blow, I left my pipe back there,’ said Nanny, so quickly that the sentence overtook the one in front.
Five seconds, said Perdita. ‘I didn’t see you take it out,’ said Agnes.
Nanny gave her a piercing look. ‘Really? Then I’d
better go and leave it there, hadn’t I? Was there something you’d left too, Magrat? Never mind, I’ll be sure to look for it, whatever it was going to be.’
‘Well!’ said Magrat, as Nanny darted back.
‘Granny was certainly not telling the truth,’ said Agnes.
‘Of course she wasn’t, she never does,’ said Magrat. ‘She expects you to work it out for yourself.’
‘But she’s right about us being three witches.’
‘Yes, but I never intended to come back to it, I’ve got other things to do. Oh, perhaps when Esme’s older I thought, maybe, a bit of part-time aromatherapy or something, but not serious full-time witching. This power-of-three business is . . . well, it’s very old fashioned . . .’
And what have we got now? Perdita chimed in. The knowing but technically inexperienced young woman, the harassed young mother and the silver-haired golden alter . . . doesn’t exactly sound mythic, does it? But Magrat just bundled up her little baby as soon as she heard Granny was in trouble and she didn’t even stop to worry about her husband . . .
‘Wait a moment . . . listen,’ said Agnes.
‘What for?’
‘Just listen . . . the sound echoes in these caves. . .’
Nanny Ogg sat down on the sand and wriggled slightly to settle in firmly. She took out her pipe.
‘So,’ she said to the recumbent figure, ‘apart from all that, how are you feeling?’
There was no reply.
‘Saw Mrs Patternoster this morning,’ Nanny went on chattily. ‘Her from over in Slice. Just passed the time of day. Mrs ivy is bearing up well, she says.’
She blew out a cloud of smoke.
‘I put her right about a few things,’ she said.
There was still silence from the shadowy figure.
‘The Naming went off all right. The priest’s as wet as a snow omelette, though.’
‘I can’t beat ’em, Gytha,’ said Granny. ‘I can’t beat ’em, and that’s a fact.’
One of Nanny Ogg’s hidden talents was knowing when to say nothing. It left a hole in the conversation that the other person felt obliged to fill.
‘They’ve got minds like steel. I can’t touch ’em. I’ve been tryin’ everything. Every trick I’ve got! They’ve been searching for me but they can’t focus right when I’m in here. The best one nearly got to me at the cottage. My cottage!’
Nanny Ogg understood the horror. A witch’s cottage was her fortress.
‘I’ve never felt anything like it, Gytha. He’s had hundreds of years to get good. You noticed the magpies? He’s using ’em as eyes. And he’s clever, too. He’s not going to fall to a garlic sandwich, that one. I can pick up that much. These vampires has learned. That’s what they’ve never done before. I can’t find a way into ’em anywhere. They’re more powerful, stronger, they think quick . . . I tell you, going mind to mind with him’s like spittin’ at a thunderstorm.’
‘So what’re you going to do?’
‘Nothing! There’s nothing I can do! Can’t you understand what I’ve been tellin’ you? Don’t you know I’ve been lying here all day tryin’ to think of something? They know all about magic, Borrowing’s second nature to them, they’re fast, they think we’re like cattle that can talk . . . I never expected anything like this, Gytha. I’ve thought about it round and round and there’s not a thing I can see to do.’
‘There’s always a way,’ said Nanny.
‘I can’t see it,’ said Granny. ‘This is it, Gytha. I might as well lie here until the water drips on me and I go into stone like the ol’ witch at the door.’
‘You’ll find a way,’ said Nanny. ‘Weatherwaxes don’t let ’emselves get beaten. It’s something in the blood, like I’ve always said.’
‘I am beaten, Gytha. Even before I start. Maybe someone else has a way, but I haven’t. I’m up against a mind that’s better’n mine. I just about keep it away from me but I can’t get in. I can’t fight back.’
The chilly feeling crept over Nanny Ogg that Granny Weatherwax meant it.
‘I never thought I’d hear you say that,’ she muttered.
‘Off you go. No sense in keepin’ the baby out in the cold.’
‘And what are you going to do?’
‘Maybe I shall move on. Maybe I’ll just stop here.’
‘Can’t stop here for ever, Esme.’
‘Ask her that is by the door.’
That seemed to be all there was going to be. Nanny walked out, found the others looking slightly too innocent in the next cave, and led the way to the open air.
‘Found your pipe, then,’ said Magrat.
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘What’s she going to do?’ said Agnes.
‘You tell me,’ said Nanny. ‘I knows you was listenin’. You wouldn’t be witches if you wasn’t listenin’ somehow.’
‘Well, what can we do that she can’t? If she’s beaten, then so are we, aren’t we?’
‘What did Granny mean, “from can to can’t”?’ said Magrat.
‘Oh, from the first moment in the morning when you can see to the last moment in the evenin’ when you can’t,’ said Nanny.
‘She’s really feeling low, isn’t she?’
Nanny paused by the stone witch. Her pipe had gone out. She struck a match on the hooked nose.
‘There’s three of us,’ she said. ‘The right number. So we’ll start by having a proper coven meetin’ . . .’
‘Aren’t you worried?’ said Agnes. ‘She’s . . . giving up. . . ‘
‘Then it’s up to us to carry on, isn’t it?’ said Nanny.
Nanny had placed the cauldron in the middle of the floor for the look of the thing, although an indoor coven meeting didn’t feel right, and one without Granny Weatherwax felt worse.
Perdita said it made them look like soppy girls playing at it. The only fire in the room was in the huge black iron range, the very latest model, recently installed for Nanny by her loving sons. On it, the kettle began to boil.
‘I’ll make the tea, shall I?’ said Magrat, getting up.
‘No, you sit down. It’s Agnes’s job to make the tea,’ said Nanny. ‘You’re the mother, so it’s your job to pour.’
‘What’s your job, Nanny?’ said Agnes.
‘I drinks it,’ said Nanny promptly. ‘Right. We’ve got to find out more while they’re still actin’ friendly. Agnes, you go back to the castle with Magrat and the baby. She needs extra help anyway.’
‘What good will that do?’
‘You told me yourself,’ said Nanny. ‘Vampires don’t affect you. As soon as they try to see Agnes’s mind it sinks down and up pops Perdita like a seesaw. Just when they’re looking at Perdita, here comes Agnes again. Young Vlad’s definitely got his eye on you, ain’t he?’
‘Certainly not!’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Nanny. ‘Men always like women that’ve got a bit of mystery to ’em. They like a challenge, see? And while he’s got his eye on you keeping your eye on Magrat, you’ve got your other eye on him, understand? Everyone’s got a weakness. Maybe we’ll not see the back of these vampires by going over to the curtains and saying, “My, isn’t it stuffy in here?” but there’s got to be some other way.’
‘And if there isn’t?’
‘Marry him,’ said Nanny firmly. Magrat gasped. The teapot rattled in her hand.
‘That’s horrible!’ she said.
‘I’d rather kill myself,’ said Agnes. In the morning, said Perdita.
‘Dun’t have to be a long marriage,’ said Nanny. ‘Put a pointy stake in your garter and our lad’ll be getting cold even before they’ve finished cutting up the wedding cake.’
‘Nanny!’
‘Or maybe you could just sort of . . . make him change his ways a bit,’ Nanny went on. ‘It’s amazing what a wife can do if she knows her own mind, or minds in your case, course. Look at King Verence the First, for one. He used to toss all his meat bones over his shoulder until he was married and the Queen made him leave them on the side of the plate. I’d only bin married to the first Mr Ogg for a month before he was getting out of the bath if he needed to pee. You can refine a husband. Maybe you could point him in the direction of blutwurst and black puddings and underdone steak.’