Aggressiveness did not normally impress him, but since in yesterday’s battle at Lancre Castle he’d had to physically lift Verence off the ground in order to stop him slaughtering enemies, friends, furniture, walls and his own feet, he was certainly seeing his king in a new light. It had turned out to be an extremely short battle. The mercenaries had been only too keen to surrender, especially after Shawn’s assault. The real fight had been to keep Verence away from them long enough to allow them to say so.
Jason was impressed.
King Verence, inside the coach, laid his head in
his wife’s lap and groaned as she wiped his brow with a cloth . . . ‘
At a respectable distance the coach was followed by a cart containing the witches, although what it contained mostly was snore.
Granny Weatherwax had a primal snore. It had never been tamed. No one had ever had to sleep next to it, to curb its wilder excesses by means of a kick, a prod in the small of the back or a pillow used as a bludgeon. It had had years in a lonely bedroom to perfect the knark, the graaah and the gnoc, gnoc, gnoc unimpeded by the nudges, jabs and occasional attempts at murder that usually moderate the snore impulse over time.
She sprawled in the straw at the bottom of the cart, mouth open, and snored.
‘You half expect to find the shafts sawed through, don’t you?’ said Nanny, who was leading the horse. ‘Still, you can hear it doin’ her good.’
‘I’m a bit worried about Mister Oats, though,’ said Agnes. ‘He’s just sitting there and grinning.’
Oats was sitting with his legs over the tail of the cart, staring happily at the sky.
‘Did he hit his head?’ said Nanny.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Let him be, then. At least he ain’t settin’ fire to anything . . . Oh, here’s an old friend. . .’
Igor, tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth in the ferocity of his concentration, was putting the finishing touches to a new sign. It read ‘Why not vysyt our Gifte Shoppe?’ He stood up and nodded as the cart drew near.
‘The old marthter came up with thome new ideath while he wath dead,’ he said, feeling that some explanation was called for. ‘Thith afternoon I’ve got to thtart building a funfair, whatever that ith.’
‘That’s basic’ly swings,’ said Nanny.
Igor brightened up. ‘Oh, I’ve plenty of rope and I’ve alwayth been a dab hand at nootheth,’ he said.
‘No, that’s not-‘ Agnes began, but Nanny Ogg cut in quickly.
‘I s’pose it all depends on who’s going to have the fun,’ she said. ‘Well, be seeing you, Igor. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, if you ever find anything I wouldn’t do.’
‘We’re very sorry about Scraps,’ said Agnes. ‘Perhaps we can find you a puppy or-‘
‘Thankth all the thame, but no. There’th only one Thcrapth.’
He waved to them until they were round the next bend.
As Agnes turned round again she saw the three magpies. They were perched on a branch over the road.
“Three for a funeral-“‘ she began.
A stone whirred up. There was an indignant squawk and a shower of feathers.
‘Two for mirth,’ said Nanny, in a self-satisfied voice.
‘Nanny, that was cheating.’
‘Witches always cheat,’ said Nanny Ogg. She glanced back at the sleeping figure behind them. ‘Everyone knows that – who knows anything about witches.’
They went home to Lancre.
* * *
It had been raining again. Water had seeped into Oats’s tent and also into the harmonium, which now emitted an occasional squashed-frog burp when it was played. The songbooks also smelled rather distressingly of cat.
He gave up on them and turned to the task of disassembling his camp bed, which had skinned two knuckles and crushed one finger when he put it up and still looked as though it was designed for a man shaped like a banana.
Oats was aware that he was trying to avoid thinking. On the whole, he was happy with this. There was something pleasing about simply getting on with simple tasks, and listening to his own breath. Perhaps there was a way . . .
From outside there was the faint sound of something wooden hitting something hollow and whispering on the evening air.
He peered through the tent flap.
People were filing stealthily into the field. The first few were carrying planks. Several were pushing barrels. He stood with his mouth open as the very rough benches were constructed and began to fill up.
A number of the men had bandages across their noses, he noticed.
Then he heard the rattle of wheels and saw the royal coach lurch through the gateway. This woke him up and he scurried back into the tent, pulling damp clothes out of his bag in a frantic search for a clean shirt. His hat had never been found and
his coat was caked with mud, the leather of his shoes was cracked and the buckles had instantly tarnished in the acid marshes, but surely a clean shirt-
Someone tried to knock on the damp canvas and then, after an interval of half a second, stepped into the tent.
‘Are you decent?’ said Nanny Ogg, looking him up and down. ‘We’re all out here waitin’, you know. Lost sheep waitin’ to be shorn, you might say,’ she added, her manner suggesting very clearly that she was doing something that she personally disapproved of, but doing it just the same.
Oats turned around.
‘Mrs Ogg, I know you don’t like me very much-‘
‘Don’t see why I should like you at all,’ said Nanny. ‘What with you tagging after Esme and her havin’ to help you all that way across the mountains like that.’
The response was screaming up Oats’s throat before he noticed the faint knowing look in Nanny’s eyes, and he managed to turn it into a cough.
‘Er . . . yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. Silly of me, wasn’t it? Er . . . how many are out there, Mrs Ogg?’
‘Oh, a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty.’
Levers, thought Oats, and had a fleeting vision of the pictures in Nanny’s parlour. She controls the levers of lots of people. But someone pulled her lever first, I’ll bet.
‘And what do they expect of me?’
‘Says Evensong on the poster,’ said Nanny
simply. ‘Even beer would be better.’
So he went out and saw the watching faces of a large part of Lancre’s population lined up in the late-afternoon light. The King and Queen were in the front row. Verence nodded regally at oats to signal that whatever it was that he intended ought to start around now.
It was clear from the body language of Nanny Ogg that any specifically Omnian prayers would not be tolerated, and Oats made do with a generic prayer of thanks to any god that might be listening and even to the ones that weren’t.
Then he pulled out the stricken harmonium and tried a few chords until Nanny elbowed him aside, rolled up her sleeves and coaxed notes out of the damp bellows that oats never even knew were in there.
The singing wasn’t very enthusiastic, though, until Oats tossed aside the noisome songbook and taught them some of the songs he remembered from his grandmother, full of fire and thunder and death and justice and tunes you could actually whistle, with titles like ‘Om Shall Trample The Ungodly’ and ‘Lift Me To The Skies’ and ‘Light The Good Light’. They went down well. Lancre people weren’t too concerned about religion, but they knew what it ought to sound like.
While he led the singing, with the aid of a long stick and the words of the hymns scrawled on the side of his tent, he scanned his . . . well, he decided to call it his congregation. It was his first real one. There were plenty of women, and a lot
of very well scrubbed men, but one face was patently not there. Its absence dominated the scene.
But, as he raised his eyes upwards in mid-song, he did notice an eagle far overhead, a mere speck gyrating across the darkening sky, possibly hunting for lost lambs.
And then it was over and people left, quietly, with the look of those who’d done a job which had not been unpleasant but which was nevertheless over. The collection plate produced two pennies, some carrots, a large onion, a small loaf, a pound of mutton, a jug of milk and a pickled pig’s trotter.
‘We’re not really a cash economy,’ said King Verence, stepping forward. He had a bandage across his forehead.
‘Oh, it’ll make a good supper, sire,’ said Oats, in the madly cheerful voice that people use when addressing royalty.
‘Surely you’ll dine with us?’ said Magrat.
‘I . . . er . . . was planning to leave at first light, sire. So I really ought to spend the evening packing and setting fire to the camp bed.’