‘I’m going to have a word with young Verence,’ said Nanny.
‘He is the King, Nanny,’ said Agnes.
‘That’s no reason for him to go around acting like he was royalty.’
‘I think it is, actually.’
‘None of that cheek. You just go and find this Omnian and keep an eye on him.’
‘What should I look for?’ said Agnes sourly. ‘A column of smoke?’
‘They all wear black,’ said Nanny firmly. ‘Hah! Typical!’
‘Well? So do we.’
‘Right! But ours is . . . ours is. . .’ Nanny thumped her chest, causing considerable ripples, ‘ours is the right black, right? Now, off you go and look inconspicuous,’ added Nanny, a lady wearing a two-foot-tall pointed black hat. She stared around at the crowd again, and nudged her son.
‘Shawn, you did deliver an invite to Esme Weatherwax, didn’t you?’
He looked horrified. ‘Of course, Mum.’
‘Shove it under her door?’
‘No, Mum. You know she gave me an ear bashin’ when the snails got at that postcard last year. I wedged it in the hinges, good and tight.’
‘There’s a good boy,’ said Nanny.
Lancre people didn’t bother much with letterboxes. Mail was infrequent but biting gales were not. Why have a slot in the door to let in unsolicited winds? So letters were left under large stones, wedged firmly in flowerpots or slipped under the door.
There were never very many.[4] Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants. The chips on some shoulders had been passed down for generations. Some had antique value. A bloody good grudge, Lancre reckoned, was like a fine old wine. You looked after it carefully and left it to your children.
You never wrote to anyone. If you had anything to say, you said it to their face. It kept everything nice and hot.
Agnes edged into the crowd, feeling stupid. She often did. Now she knew why Magrat Garlick had always worn those soppy floppy dresses and never wore the pointy hat. Wear the pointy hat and dress in black, and on Agnes there was plenty of black to go around, and everyone saw you in a certain way. You were A Witch. It had its good points. Among the bad ones was the fact that people turned to you when they were in trouble and never thought for a moment that you couldn’t cope.
But she got a bit of respect, even from people who could remember her before she’d been allowed to wear the hat. They tended to make way for her, although people tended to make way in any case for Agnes when she was in full steam.
‘Evening, miss. . .’
She turned and saw Hodgesaargh in full official regalia.
It was important not to smile at times like this, so Agnes kept a straight face and tried to ignore Perdita’s hysterical laughter at the back of her mind.
She’d seen Hodgesaargh occasionally, around the edges of the woods or up on the moors. Usually the royal falconer was vainly fighting off his hawks, who attacked him for a pastime, and in the case of King Henry kept picking him up and dropping him again in the belief that he was a giant tortoise.
It wasn’t that he was a bad falconer. A few other people in Lancre kept hawks and reckoned he was one of the best trainers in the mountains, possibly because he was so single-minded about it. It was
just that he trained every feathery little killing machine so well that it became unable to resist seeing what he tasted like.
He didn’t deserve it. Nor did he deserve his ceremonial costume. Usually, when not in the company of King Henry, he just wore working leathers and about three sticking plasters, but what he was wearing now had been designed hundreds of years before by someone with a lyrical view of the countryside who had never had to run through a bramble bush with a gerfalcon hanging on their ear. It had a lot of red and gold in it and would have looked much better on someone two feet taller who had the legs for red stockings. The hat was best not talked about, but if you had to, you’d talk about it in terms of something big, red and floppy. With a feather in it.
‘Miss Nitt?’ said Hodgesaargh.
‘Sorry . . . I was looking at your hat.’
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ said Hodgesaargh amiably. ‘This is William. She’s a buzzard. But she thinks she’s a chicken. She can’t fly. I’m having to teach her how to hunt.’
Agnes was craning her neck for any signs of overtly religious activity, but the incongruity of the slightly bedraggled creature on Hodgesaargh’s wrist brought her gaze back down again.
‘How?’ she said.
‘She walks into the burrows and kicks the rabbits to death. And I’ve almost cured her of crowing. Haven’t I, William?’
‘William?’ said Agnes. ‘Oh . . . yes.’ To a falconer, she remembered, all hawks were ‘she’.
‘Have you seen any Omnians here?’ she whispered, leaning down towards him.
‘What kind of bird are they, miss?’ said the falconer uneasily. He always seemed to have a preoccupied air when not discussing hawks, like a man with a big dictionary who couldn’t find the index.
‘Oh, er . . . don’t worry about it, then.’ She stared at William again and said, ‘How? I mean, how does a bird like that think he’s- she’s a chicken?’
‘Can happen all too easy, miss,’ said Hodgesaargh. ‘Thomas Peerless over in Bad Ass pinched an egg and put it under a broody hen, miss. He didn’t take the chicken away in time. So William thought if her mum was a chicken, then so was she.’
‘Well, that’s-‘
‘And that’s what happens, miss. When I raise them from eggs I don’t do that. I’ve got a special glove, miss-‘
‘That’s absolutely fascinating, but I’d better go,’ said Agnes, quickly.
‘Yes, miss.’
She’d spotted the quarry, walking across the hall.
There was something unmistakable about him. It was as if he was a witch. It wasn’t that his black robe ended at the knees and became a pair of legs encased in grey socks and sandals, or that his hat had a tiny crown but a brim big enough to set out your dinner on. It was because wherever he walked he was in a little empty space that seemed
to move around him, just like you got around witches. No one wanted to get too close to witches.
She couldn’t see his face. He was making a beeline for the buffet table.
‘Excuse me, Miss Nitt?’
Shawn had appeared at her side. He stood very stiffly, because if he made any sudden turns the oversized wig tended to spin on his head.
‘Yes, Shawn?’ said Agnes.
‘The Queen wants a word, miss,’ said Shawn.
‘With me?’
‘Yes, miss. She’s up in the Ghastly Green Drawing Room, miss.’ Shawn swivelled slowly. His wig stayed facing the same way.
Agnes hesitated. It was a royal command, she supposed, even if it was only from Magrat Garlick as was, and as such it superseded anything Nanny had asked her to do. Anyway, she had spotted the priest, and it was not as though he was going to set fire to everyone over the canapes. She’d better go.
A little hatch shot open behind the doleful Igor.
‘Why’ve we stopped this time?’
‘Troll’th in the way, marthter.’
‘A what?’
Igor rolled his eyes. ‘A troll’th in the way,’ he said.
The hatch shut. There was a whispered conversation inside the coach. The hatch opened.
‘You mean a troll?’
‘Yeth, marthter.’
‘Run it down!’
The troll advanced, holding a flickering torch above its head. At some point recently someone had said ‘This troll needs a uniform’ and had found that the only thing in the armoury that would fit was the helmet, and then only if you attached it to his head with string.
‘The old Count wouldn’t have told me to run it down,’ Igor muttered, not quite under his breath. ‘But, then, he wath a gentleman.’
‘What was that?’ a female voice snapped.
The troll reached the coach and banged its knuckles on its helmet respectfully.
‘Evenin’,’ it said. ‘Dis is a bit embarrassin’. You know a pole?’
‘Pole?’ said Igor suspiciously.
‘It are a long wooden fing-‘
‘Yeth? Well? What about it?’
‘I’d like you to imagine, right, dat dere’s a black an’ yellow striped one across dis road, right? Only ‘cos we’ve only got der one, an’ it’s bein’ used up on der Copperhead road tonight.’
The hatch slid open.
‘Get a move on, man! Run it down !’
‘I could go an’ get it if you like,’ said the troll, shifting nervously from one huge foot to the other. ‘Only it wouldn’t be here till tomorrow, right? Or you could pretend it’s here right now, an’ then I could pretend to lift it up, and dat’d be okay, right?’