‘Do it, then,’ said Igor. He ignored the grumbling behind him. The old Count had always been polite to trolls even though you couldn’t bite them, and that was real class in a vampire.
‘Only firs’ I gotta stamp somethin’,’ said the troll. It held up half a potato and a paint-soaked rag.
‘Why?’
‘Shows you’ve bin past me,’ said the troll.
‘Yeth, but we will have been parthed you,’ Igor pointed out. ‘I mean, everyone will know we’ve been parthed you becauthe we are.’
‘But it’ll show you done it officially,’ said the troll.
‘What’ll happen if we jutht drive on?’ said Igor.
‘Er . . . den I won’t lift der pole,’ said the troll.
Locked in a metaphysical conundrum, they both looked at the patch of road where the virtual pole barred the way.
Normally, Igor wouldn’t have wasted any time. But the family had been getting on his nerves, and he reacted in the traditional way of the put-upon servant by suddenly becoming very stupid. He leaned down and addressed the coach’s occupants through the hatch.
‘It’th a border check, marthter,’ he said. ‘We got to have thomething thtamped.’
There was more whispering inside the coach, and then a large white rectangle, edged in gold, was thrust ungraciously through the hatch. Igor passed it down.
‘Seems a shame,’ said the troll, stamping it inexpertly and handing it back.
‘What’th thith?’ Igor demanded.
‘Pardon?’
‘Thith . . . thtupid mark!’
‘Well, the potato wasn’t big enough for the official seal and I don’t know what a seal look like in any case but I reckon dat’s a good carvin’ of a duck I done there,’ said the troll cheerfully. ‘Now . . . are you ready? ‘Cos I’m liftin’ der pole. Here it goes now. Look at it pointin’ up in der air like dat. Dis means you can go.’
The coach rolled on a little way and stopped just before the bridge.
The troll, aware that he’d done his duty, wandered towards it and heard what he considered to be a perplexing conversation, although to Big Jim Beef most conversations involving polysyllabic words were shrouded in mystery.
‘Now, I want you to all pay attention-‘
‘Father, we have done this before.’
‘The point can’t be hammered home far enough. That is the Lancre River down there. Running water. And we will cross it. It is as well to consider that your ancestors, although quite capable of undertaking journeys of hundreds of miles, nevertheless firmly believed that they couldn’t cross a stream. Do I need to point out the contradiction?’
‘No, Father.’
‘Good. Cultural conditioning would be the death of us, if we are not careful. Drive on, Igor.’
The troll watched them go. Coldness seemed to follow them across the bridge.
Granny Weatherwax was airborne again, glad of the clean, crisp air. She was well above the trees and, to the benefit of all concerned, no one could see her face.
Isolated homesteads passed below, a few with lighted windows but most of them dark, because people would long ago have headed for the palace.
There was a story under every roof, she knew. She knew all about stories. But those down there were the stories that were never to be told, the little secret stories, enacted in little rooms . . .
They were about those times when medicines didn’t help and headology was at a loss because a mind was a rage of pain in a body that had become its own enemy, when people were simply in a prison made of flesh, and at times like this she could let them go. There was no need for desperate stuff with a pillow, or deliberate mistakes with the medicine. You didn’t push them out of the world, you just stopped the world pulling them back. You just reached in, and . . . showed them the way.
There was never anything said. Sometimes you saw in the face of the relatives the request they’d never, ever put words around, or maybe they’d say, ‘Is there something you can do for him?’ and this was, perhaps, the code. If you dared ask, they’d be shocked that you might have thought they meant anything other than, perhaps, a comfier pillow.
And any midwife, out in isolated cottages on bloody nights, would know all the other little secrets . . .
Never to be told . . .
She’d been a witch here all her life. And one of the things a witch did was stand right on the edge, where the decisions had to be made. You made them so that others didn’t have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there were no decisions to be made, no little secrets, that things just happened. You never said what you knew. And you didn’t ask for anything in return.
The castle was brightly lit, she saw. She could even make out figures around the bonfire.
Something else caught her eye, because she was going to look everywhere but at the castle now, and it jolted her out of her mood. Mist was pouring over the mountains and sliding down the far valleys under the moonlight. One strand was flowing towards the castle and pouring, very slowly, into the Lancre Gorge.
Of course you got mists in the spring, when the weather was changing, but this mist was coming from Uberwald.
The door to Magrat’s room was opened by Millie Chillum, the maid, who curtseyed to Agnes, or at least to her hat, and then left her alone with the Queen, who was at her dressing table.
Agnes wasn’t sure of the protocol, but tried a sort of republican curtsey. This caused considerable movement in outlying regions.
Queen Magrat of Lancre blew her nose and stuffed the hankie up the sleeve of her dressing gown.
‘Oh, hello, Agnes,’ she said. ‘Take a seat, do. You don’t have to bob up and down like that.
Millie does it all the time and I get seasick. Anyway, strictly speaking, witches bow.’
‘Er. . .’ Agnes began. She glanced at the crib in the corner. It had more loops and lace than any piece of furniture should.
‘She’s asleep,’ said Magrat. ‘Oh, the crib? Verence ordered it all the way from Ankh-Morpork. I said the old one they’d always used was fine, but he’s very, you know . . . modern. Please sit down.’.
‘You wanted me, your maj-‘ Agnes began, still uncertain. It was turning out to be a very complicated evening, and she wasn’t sure even now how she felt about Magrat. The woman had left echoes of herself in the cottage – an old bangle lost under the bed, rather soppy notes in some of the ancient notebooks, vases full of desiccated flowers . . . You can build up a very strange view of someone via the things they leave behind the dresser.
‘I just wanted a little talk,’ said Magrat. ‘It’s a bit . . . look, I’m really very happy, but . . . well, Millie’s nice but she agrees with me all the time and Nanny and Granny still treat me as if I wasn’t, well, you know, Queen and everything . . . not that I want to be treated as Queen all the time but, well, you know, I want them to know I’m Queen but not treat me as one, if you see what I mean. . .’
‘I think so,’ said Agnes carefully.
Magrat waved her hands in an effort to describe the indescribable. Used handkerchiefs cascaded out of her sleeves.
‘I mean . . . I get dizzy with people bobbing up and down all the time, so when they see me I like them to think, “Oh, there’s Magrat, she’s Queen now but I shall treat her in a perfectly normal way-“‘
‘But perhaps just a little bit more politely because she is Queen, after all,’ Agnes suggested.
‘Well, yes . . . exactly. Actually, Nanny’s not too bad, at least she treats everyone the same all the time, but when Granny looks at me you can see her thinking, “Oh, there’s Magrat. Make the tea, Magrat.” One day I swear I’ll make a very cutting remark. It’s as if they think I’m doing this as a hobby!’
‘I do know what you mean.’
‘It’s as if they think I’m going to get it out of my system and go back to witching again. They wouldn’t say that, of course, but that’s what they think. They really don’t believe there’s any other sort of life.’
‘That’s true.’
‘How’s the old cottage?’
‘There’s a lot of mice,’ said Agnes.
‘I know. I used to feed them. Don’t tell Granny. She’s here, isn’t she?’
‘Haven’t seen her yet,’ said Agnes.
‘Ah, she’ll be waiting for a dramatic moment,’ said Magrat. ‘And you know what? I’ve never caught her actually waiting for a dramatic moment, not in all the, well, things we’ve been involved in. I mean, if it was you or me, we’d be hanging around in the hall or something, but she just walks in and it’s the right time.’