She wasn’t a good cook. She’d never been taught proper cookery; at her school it had always been assumed that other people would be doing the cooking and that in any case it would
be for fifty people using at least four types of fork. Such dishes as she had mastered were dainty things on doilies.
But she cooked for Sam because she vaguely felt that a wife ought to and, besides, he was an eater who entirely matched her kitchen skills. He liked burnt sausages and fried eggs that went boing when you tried to stick a fork in them. If you gave him caviare, he’d want it in batter. He was an easy man to feed, if you always kept some lard in the house.
But the food here tasted as though it had been cooked by someone who had never even tried before. She’d seen the kitchens, when Serafine had given her the little tour, and they’d just about do for a cottage. The game larders, on the other hand, were the size of barns. She’d never seen so many dead things hanging up.
It was just that she was certain that venison shouldn’t be served boiled, with potatoes that were crunchy. If they were potatoes, of course. Potatoes weren’t usually grey. Even Sam, who liked the black lumpy bits you got in some mashed potatoes, would have commented. But Sybil had been brought up properly; if you can’t find something nice to say about the food, find something else to be nice about.
‘These are … really very interesting plates,’ she said dutifully. ‘Er, are you sure there’s been no more news?’ She tried to avoid watching the Baron. He was ignoring Sybil and his wife, and was prodding the meat around on his plate as if he’d forgotten what a knife and fork were for.
‘Wolfgang and his friends are still out searching,’ said Serafine. ‘But this is terrible weather for a man to be on the run.’
‘He is not on the run!’ snapped Sybil. ‘Sam is not guilty of anything!’
‘Of course, of course. All the evidence is circumstantial. Of course,’ said the Baroness soothingly. ‘Now, I suggest that as soon as they have the passes clear, you and the, er, the staff get back to the safety of AnkhMorpork before the real winter hits. We know the country, my dear. If your husband is alive, we can soon do something about it.’
‘I will not have him shamed like this! You saw him save the King!’
‘I’m sure he did, Sybil. I’m afraid I was talking to my husband at the time, but I don’t disbelieve you for a minute. Is it true that he killed all those men in the Wilinus Pass?’
‘What? But they were bandits!’
At the other end of the table the Baron had picked up a lump of meat and was trying to tear it apart with his teeth.
‘Well, of course. Yes. Of course.’
Sybil pinched the bridge of her nose. Most of her would not have considered Sam Vimes guilty of murder, actual murder, even on the evidence of three gods and a message written on the sky. But stories did get back to her, in a roundabout way. Sam got wound up about things. Sometimes he unwound all at once. There’d been that bad business with that little girl and those men over at Dolly Sisters, and when Sam had broken into the men’s lodging he found one of them had stolen one of her shoes, and she’d heard Detritus say
that if he hadn’t been there only Sam would have walked out of the room alive.
She shook her head. ‘I really would like a bath,’ she said. There was a clatter from the other end of the table.
‘Dear, you will have to eat your dinner in the changing room,’ said the Baroness, without looking round. She flashed Lady Sybil a brief, brittle smile. ‘We do not, in fact, have a … have such a, a device in the castle.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘We use the hot springs. So much more hygienic.’
‘Out in the forest?’
‘Oh, it’s quite close. And a quick run around in the snow really tones up the body.’
‘I think perhaps I’ll have a lie-down instead,’ said Lady Sybil firmly. ‘But thank you all the same.’
She made her way to the musty bedroom, fuming in a ladylike way.
She couldn’t-bring herself to like Serafine, and this was shocking, because Lady Sybil even liked Nobby Nobbs, and that took breeding. But the werewolf scraped across her nerves like a file. She remembered that she’d never liked her at school, either.
Among the other unwanted baggage that had been heaped on the young Sybil to hamper her progress through life was the injunction to be pleasant to people and say helpful things. People took this to mean that she didn’t think.
She’d hated the way Serafine had talked about dwarfs. She’d called them ‘sub-human’. Well, obviously most of them lived underground, but Sybil rather liked dwarfs. And Serafine spoke of trolls as if they were things. Sybil hadn’t met many trolls, but the ones she knew seemed to spend their lives raising their children and looking for the next dollar just like everyone else.
Worst of all, Serafine simply assumed that Sybil would naturally agree with her stupid opinions because she was a Lady. Sybil Ramkin had not had an education in these things, moral philosophy not having featured much in a curriculum that was heavy on flower-arranging, but she had a shrewd idea that in any possible debate the right side was where Serafine wasn’t.
She’d only ever written all those letters to her because it was what you did. You always wrote letters to old friends, even if you weren’t very friendly with them.
She sat on the bed and stared at the wall until the shouting started, and when the shouting started she knew Sam was alive and well, because only Sam made people that angry.
She heard the key click in the lock.
Sybil rebelled.
She was large and she was kind. She hadn’t enjoyed school much. A society of girls is not a good one in which to be large and kind, because people are inclined to interpret that as ‘stupid’ and, worse, ‘deaf’.
Lady Sybil looked out of the window. She was two floors up.
There were bars across it, but they’d been designed to keep something out; from the inside they could be lifted out of their slots. And there were musty but heavy sheets and blankets on the bed. None of this might have suggested very
much to the average person, but life in a rather strict school for well brought-up young ladies can give someone a real insight into the tricks of escapology.
Five minutes after the key had turned there was only one bar in the window and it was jerking and creaking in the stonework, suggesting that quite a heavy weight was on the sheets that had been neatly knotted around it.
Torches streamed along the castle walls. The ghastly red and black flag snapped in the wind. Vimes looked over the side of the badge. The water was a long way down, and pure white even before it reached the waterfall. Forward and back were the only possible directions here.
He reviewed his troops. Unfortunately this did not take long. Even a policeman could count up to five. Then there was Gavin and his wolves, who were lurking in the trees. And finally, very definitely finally, there was Gaspode, the Corporal Nobbs of the canine world, who’d attached himself to the group uninvited.
What else was on his side? Well, the enemy preferred not to use weapons. This bonus evaporated somewhat when you remembered that they had, at will, some very nasty teeth and claws.
He sighed and turned to Angua. ‘I know this is your family,’ he said. ‘I won’t blame you if you hang back.’
‘We’ll see, sir, shall we?’
‘How are we going to get in, sir?’ said Carrot.
‘How would you go about it, Carrot?’
‘Well, I’d start by knocking, sir.’
‘Really? Sergeant Detritus. Forward, please.’
‘Sir!’
‘Blow the bloody doors off!’
‘Yessir!’
Vines turned back to Carrot as the troll gazed thoughtfully at the door and began making extra turns on his crossbow’s winch, grunting as the springs fought back. Their fight was unsuccessful.
‘This isn’t AnkhMorpork, see?’ said Vines.
Detritus hoisted the bow on to his shoulders and took a step forward.
There was a thunk. Vines didn’t see the bundle of arrows leave the bow. They were probably already fragments by the time they’d gone a few feet. Halfway towards the doors the expanding cloud of splinters exploded into flame from the air friction.
What hit the doors was a fireball as angry and unstoppable as the Fifth Elephant and travelling at an appreciable fraction of local lightspeed.