‘Drat,’ she said, under her breath.
She looked around carefully, in case anyone was watching. In fact it was only a hunting badger who, hearing the thumping of running feet, poked its head out from the bushes and saw Granny hurtling down the path with the broomstick held stiff-armed beside her. At last the magic caught, and she managed to vault clumsily on to it before it trundled into the night sky as gracefully as a duck with one wing missing.
From above the trees came a muffled curse against all dwarfish mechanics.
Most witches preferred to live in isolated cottages with the traditional curly chimneys and weed-grown thatch. Granny Weatherwax approved of this; it was no good being a witch unless you let people know.
Nanny Ogg didn’t care much about what people knew and even less for what they thought, and lived in a new, knick-knack crammed cottage in the middle of Lancre town itself and at the heart of her own private empire. Various daughters and daughters-in-law came in to cook and clean on a sort of rota. Every flat surface was stuffed with ornaments brought back by far-travelling members of the family. Sons and grandsons kept the logpile stacked, the roof shingled, the chimney swept; the drinks cupboard was always full, the pouch by her rocking chair always stuffed with tobacco. Above the hearth was a huge pokerwork sign saying ‘Mother’. No tyrant in the whole history of the world had ever achieved a domination so complete.
Nanny Ogg also kept a cat, a huge one-eyed grey torn called Greebo who divided his time between sleeping, eating and fathering the most enormous incestuous feline tribe. He opened his eye like a yellow window into Hell when he heard Granny’s broomstick land awkwardly on the back lawn. With the instinct of his kind he recognised Granny as an inveterate cat-hater and oozed gently under a chair.
Magrat was already seated primly by the fire.
It is one of the few unbendable rules of magic that its practitioners cannot change their own appearance for any length of time. Their bodies develop a kind of morphic inertia and gradually return to their original shape. But Magrat tried. Every morning her hair was long, thick and blond, but by the evening it had always returned to its normal worried frizz. To ameliorate the effect she had tried to plait violets and cowslips in it. The result was not all she had hoped. It gave the impression that a window box had fallen on her head.
‘Good evening,’ said Granny.
‘Well met by moonlight,’ said Magrat politely. ‘Merry meet. A star shines on—’
‘Wotcha,’ said Nanny Ogg. Magrat winced.
Granny sat down and started removing the pins that nailed her tall hat to her bun. Finally the sight of Magrat dawned on her.
‘Magrat!’
The young witch jumped, and clamped her knuckly hands to the virtuous frontage of her gown.
‘Yes?’ she quavered.
‘What have you got on your lap?’
‘It’s my familiar,’ she said defensively.
‘What happened to that toad you had?’
‘It wandered off,’ muttered Magrat. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t very good.’
Granny sighed. Magrat’s desperate search for a reliable familiar had been going on for some time, and despite the love and attention she lavished on them they all seemed to have some terrible flaw, such as a tendency to bite, get trodden on or, in extreme cases, metamorphose.
‘That makes fifteen this year,’ said Granny. ‘Not counting the horse. What’s this one?’
‘It’s a rock,’ chuckled Nanny Ogg.
‘Well, at least it should last,’ said Granny.
The rock extended a head and gave her a look of mild amusement.
‘It’s a tortoyse,’ said Magrat. ‘I bought it down in Sheep-ridge market. It’s incredibly old and knows many secrets, the man said.’
‘I know that man,’ said Granny. ‘He’s the one who sells goldfish that tarnish after a day or two.’
‘Anyway, I shall call him Lightfoot,’ said Magrat, her voice warm with defiance. ‘I can if I want.’
‘Yes, yes, all right, I’m sure,’ said Granny. ‘Anyway, how goes it, sisters? It is two months since last we met.’
‘It should be every new moon,’ said Magrat sternly. ‘Regular.’
‘It was our Grame’s youngest’s wedding,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Couldn’t miss it.’
‘And I was up all night with a sick goat,’ said Granny Weatherwax promptly.
‘Yes, well,’ said Magrat doubtfully. She rummaged in her bag. ‘Anyway, if we’re going to start, we’d better light the candles.’
The senior witches exchanged a resigned glance.
‘But we got this lovely new lamp our Tracie sent me,’ said Nanny Ogg innocently. ‘And I was going to poke up the fire a bit.’
‘I have excellent night vision, Magrat,’ said Granny sternly. ‘And you’ve been reading them funny books. Grimmers.’
‘Grimoires—’
‘You ain’t going to draw on the floor again, neither,’ warned Nanny Ogg. ‘It took our Dreen days to clean up all those wossnames last time—’
‘Runes,’ said Magrat. There was a look of pleading in her eyes. ‘Look, just one candle?’
‘All right,’ said Nanny Ogg, relenting a bit. ‘If it makes you feel any better. Just the one, mind. And a decent white one. Nothing fancy.’
Magrat sighed. It probably wasn’t a good idea to bring out the rest of the contents of her bag.
‘We ought to get a few more here,’ she said sadly. ‘It’s not right, a coven of three.’
‘I didn’t know we was still a coven. No-one told me we was still a coven,’ sniffed Granny Weatherwax. ‘Anyway, there’s no-one else this side of the mountain, excepting old Gammer Dismass, and she doesn’t get out these days.’
‘But a lot of young girls in my village . . .’ said Magrat. ‘You know. They could be keen.’
‘That’s not how we do it, as well you know,’ said Granny disapprovingly. ‘People don’t go and find witchcraft, it comes and finds them.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Magrat. ‘Sorry.’
‘Right,’ said Granny, slightly mollified. She’d never mastered the talent for apologising, but she appreciated it in other people.
‘What about this new duke, then,’ said Nanny, to lighten the atmosphere.
Granny sat back. ‘He had some houses burned down in Bad Ass,’ she said. ‘Because of taxes.’
‘How horrible,’ said Magrat.
‘Old Kind Verence used to do that,’ said Nanny. ‘Terrible temper he had.’
‘He used to let people get out first, though,’ said Granny.
‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny, who was a staunch royalist. ‘He could be very gracious like that. He’d pay for them to be rebuilt, as often as not. If he remembered.’
‘And every Hogswatchnight, a side of venison. Regular,’ said Granny wistfully.
‘Oh, yes. Very respectful to witches, he was,’ added Nanny Ogg. ‘When he was out hunting people, if he met me in the woods, it was always off with his helmet and “I hope I finds you well, Mistress Ogg” and next day he’d send his butler down with a couple of bottles of something. He was a proper king.’
‘Hunting people isn’t really right, though,’ said Magrat.
‘Well, no,’ Granny Weatherwax conceded. ‘But it was only if they’d done something bad. He said they enjoyed it really. And he used to let them go if they gave him a good run,’
‘And then there was that great hairy thing of his,’ said Nanny Ogg.
There was a perceptible change in the atmosphere. It became warmer, darker, filled at the corners with the shadows of unspoken conspiracy.
‘Ah,’ said Granny Weatherwax distantly. ‘His droit de seigneur.’
‘Needed a lot of exercise,’ said Nanny Ogg, staring at the fire.
‘But next day he’d send his housekeeper round with a bag of silver and a hamper of stuff for the wedding,’ said Granny. ‘Many a couple got a proper start in life thanks to that.’
‘Ah,’ agreed Nanny. ‘One or two individuals, too.’
‘Every inch a king,’ said Granny.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Magrat suspiciously. ‘Did he keep pets?’
The two witches surfaced from whatever deeper current they had been swimming in. Granny Weatherwax shrugged.
‘I must say,’ Magrat went on, in severe tones, ‘if you think so much of the old king, you don’t seem very worried about him being killed. I mean, it was a pretty suspicious accident.’
‘That’s kings for you,’ said Granny. ‘They come and go, good and bad. His father poisoned the king we had before.’
‘That was old Thargum,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Had a big red beard, I recall. He was very gracious too, you know.’
‘Only now no-one must say Felmet killed the king,’ said Magrat.
‘What?’ said Granny.
‘He had some people executed in Lancre, the other day for saying it,’ Magrat went on. ‘Spreading malicious lies, he said. He said anyone saying different will see the inside of his dungeons, only not for long. He said Verence died of natural causes.’
‘Well, being assassinated is natural causes for a king,’ said Granny. ‘I don’t see why he’s so sheepish about it. When old Thargum was killed they stuck his head on a pole, had a big bonfire and everyone in the palace got drunk for a week.’