Equal Rites Read online

Page 23

  Granny could sense it like a big and quite friendly animal, just waiting to roll over on its roof and have its floor scratched. It was paying no attention to her, however. It was watching Esk.

  Granny found the child by following the threads of the University's attention and watched in fascination as the scenes unfolded in the Great Hall . . . .

  “- in there?”

  The voice came from a long way away.

  “Mmph 7 ”

  “Aye said, what do you see in there?” repeated Mrs Whitlow.

  “Eh?”

  “Aye said, what do -”

  “Oh. ” Granny reeled her mind in, quite confused. The trouble with Borrowing another mind was, you always felt out of place when you got back to your own body, and Granny was the first person ever to read the mind of a building. Now she was feeling big and gritty and full of passages.

  “Are you all right?”

  Granny nodded, and opened her windows. She extended her east and west wings and tried to concentrate on the tiny cup held in her pillars.

  Fortunately Mrs Whitlow put her plaster complexion and stony silence down to occult powers at work, while Granny found that a brief exposure to the vast silicon memory of the University had quite stimulated her imagination.

  In a voice like a draughty corridor, which made the housekeeper very impressed, she wove a future full of keen young men fighting for Mrs Whitlow's ample favours. She also spoke very quickly, because what she had seen in the Great Hall made her anxious to go around to the main gates again.

  “There is another thing,” she added.

  “Yes? Yes?”

  “I see you hiring a new servant - you do hire the servants here, don't you? Right - and this one is a young girl, very economical, very good worker, can turn her hand to anything. ”

  “What about her, then?” said Mrs Whitlow, already savouring Granny's surprisingly graphic descriptions of her future and drunk with curiosity.

  “The spirits are a little unclear on this point,” said Granny, “But it is very important that you hire her. ”

  “No problem there,” said Mrs Whitlow, “can't keep servants here, you know, not for long. It's all the magic. It leaks down here, you know. Especially from the library, where they keep all them magical books. Two of the top floor maids walked out yesterday, actually, they said they were fed up going to bed not knowing what shape they would wake up in the morning. The senior wizards turn them back, you know. But it's not the same. ”

  “Yes, well, the spirits say this young lady won't be any trouble as far as that is concerned,” said Granny grimly.

  “If she can sweep and scrub she's welcome, Aye'm sure,” said Mrs Whitlow, looking puzzled.

  “She even brings her own broom. According to the spirits, that is. ”

  “How very helpful. When is this young lady going to arrive?”

  “Oh, soon, soon - that's what the spirits say. ”

  A faint suspicion clouded the housekeeper's face. “This isn't the sort of thing spirits normally say. Where do they say that, exactly?”

  “Here,” said Granny. “Look, the little cluster of tea-leaves between the sugar and this crack here. Am I right?”

  Their eyes met. Mrs Whitlow might have had her weaknesses but she was quite tough enough to rule the below-stairs world of the University. However, Granny could outstare a snake; after a few seconds the housekeeper's eyes began to water.

  “Yes, Aye expect you are,” she said meekly, and fished a handkerchief from the recesses of her bosom.

  “Well then,” said Granny, sitting back and replacing the teacup in its saucer.

  “There are plenty of opportunities here for a young woman willing to work hard,” said Mrs Whitlow. “Aye myself started as a maid, you know. ”

  “We all do,” said Granny vaguely. “And now I must be going. ” She stood up and reached for her hat.

  “But -”

  “Must hurry. Urgent appointment,” said Granny over her shoulder as she hurried down the steps.

  “There's a bundle of old clothes -”

  Granny paused, her instincts battling for mastery.

  “Any black velvet?”

  “Yes, and some silk. ”

  Granny wasn't sure she approved of silk, she'd heard it came out of a caterpillar's bottom, but black velvet had a powerful attraction. Loyalty won.

  “Put it on one side, I may call again,” she shouted, and ran down the corridor.

  Cooks and scullery maids darted for cover as the old woman pounded along the slippery flagstones, leapt up the stairs to the courtyard and skidded out into the lane, her shawl flying out behind her and her boots striking sparks from the cobbles. Once out into the open she hitched up her skirts and broke into a full gallop, turning the corner into the main square in a screeching two-boot drift that left a long white scratch across the stones.

  She was just in time to see Esk come running through the gates, in tears.

  “The magic just wouldn't work! I could feel it there but it just wouldn't come out!”

  “Perhaps you were trying too hard,” said Granny. “Magic's like fishing. Jumping around and splashing never caught any fish, you have to bide quiet and let it happen natural. ”

  “And then everyone laughed at me! Someone even gave me a sweet!”

  “You got some profit out of the day, then,” said Granny.

  “Granny!” said Esk accusingly.

  “Well, what did you expect?” she asked. “At least they only laughed at you. Laughter don't hurt. You walked up to chief wizard and showed off in front of everyone and only got laughed at? You're doing well, you are. Have you eaten the sweet?”

  Esk scowled. “Yes. ”

  “What kind was it?”

  “Toffee. ”

  “Can't abide toffee. ”

  “Huh,” said Esk, “I suppose you want me to get peppermint next time?”

  “Don't you sarky me, young-fellow-me-lass. Nothing wrong with peppermint. Pass me that bowl. ”

  Another advantage of city life, Granny had discovered, was glassware. Some of her more complicated potions required apparatus which either had to be bought from the dwarves at extortionate rates or, if ordered from the nearest human glassblower, arrived in straw and, usually, pieces. She had tried blowing her own and the effort always made her cough, which produced some very funny results. But the city's thriving alchemy profession meant that there were whole shops full of glass for the buying, and a witch could always arrange bargain prices.

  She watched carefully as yellow steam surged along a twisty maze of tubing and eventually condensed as one large, sticky droplet. She caught it neatly on the end of a glass spoon and very carefully tipped it into a tiny glass phial.

  Esk watched her through her tears.

  “What's that?” she asked.

  “It's a neveryoumind,” said Granny, sealing the phial's cork with wax.

  “A medicine?”

  “In a manner of speaking. ” Granny pulled her writing set towards her and selected a pen. Her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth as she very carefully wrote out a label, with much scratching and pausing to work out the spellings.

  “Who's it for?”

  “Mrs Herapath, the glassblower's wife. ”

  Esk blew her nose. “He's the one who doesn't blow much glass, isn't he?”

  Granny looked at her over the top of the desk.

  “How do you mean?”

  “When she was talking to you yesterday she called him Old Mister Once A Fortnight. ”

  “Mmph,” said Granny. She carefully finished the sentence: “Dylewt in won pint warter and won droppe in hys tee and be Shure to wear loose clowthing allso that no vysitors exspected. ”

  One day, she told herself, I'm going to have to have that talk with her.

  The child seemed curiously dense. She had already assisted at enough births and t
aken the goats to old Nanny Annaple's billy without drawing any obvious conclusions. Granny wasn't quite certain what she should do about it, but the time never seemed appropriate to bring up the subject. She wondered whether, in her hearts of hearts, she was too embarrassed; she felt like a farrier who could shoe horses, cure them, rear them and judge them, but had only the sketchiest idea about how one rode them.

  She pasted the label on to the phial and wrapped it carefully in plain paper.

  Now.

  “There is another way into the University,” she said, looking sidelong at Esk, who was making a disgruntled job of mashing herbs in a mortar. “A witches' way. ”

  Esk looked up. Granny treated herself to a thin smile and started work on another label; writing labels was always the hard part of magic, as far as she was concerned.

  “But I don't expect you'd be interested,” she went on. “It's not very glamorous. ”

  “They laughed at me,” Esk mumbled.

  “Yes. You said. So you won't be wanting to try again, then. I quite understand. ”

  There was silence broken only by the scratching of Granny's pen. Eventually Esk said: “This way -”

  “Mmph?”

  “It'll get me into the University?”

  “Of course,” said Granny haughtily. “I said I'd find a way, didn't I? A very good way, too. You won't have to bother with lessons, you can go all over the place, no one will notice you you'll be invisible really - and, well, you can really clean up. But of course, after all that laughing, you won't be interested. Will you?”

  “Pray have another cup of tea, Mrs Weatherwax?” said Mrs Whitlow.

  “Mistress,” said Granny.

  “Pardon?”

  “It's Mistress Weatherwax,” said Granny. “Three sugars, please. ”

  Mrs Whitlow pushed the bowl towards her. Much as she looked forward to Granny's visits it came expensive in sugar. Sugar lumps never seemed to last long around Granny.

  “Very bad for the figure,” she said. “And the teeth, so Aye hear. ”

  “I never had a figure to speak of and my teeth take care of themselves,” said Granny. It was true, mores the pity. Granny suffered from robustly healthy teeth, which she considered a big drawback in a witch. She really envied Nanny Annaple, the witch over the mountain, who managed to lose all her teeth by the time she was twenty and had real crone-credibility. It meant you ate a lot of soup, but you also got a lot of respect. And then there was warts. Without any effort Nanny managed to get a face like a sockful of marbles, while Granny had tried every reputable wart-causer and failed to raise even the obligatory nose wart. Some witches had all the luck.

  “Mmph?” she said, aware of Mrs Whitlow's fluting.

  “Aye said,” said Mrs Whitlow, “that young Eskarina is a real treasure. Quate the little find. She keeps the floors spotless, spotless. No task too big. Aye said to her yesterday, Aye said, that broom of yours might as well have a life of its own, and do you know what she said?”

  “I couldn't even venture a guess,” said Granny, weakly.

  “She said the dust was afraid of it! Can you imagine?”

  “Yes,” said Granny.

  Mrs Whitlow pushed her teacup towards her and gave her an embarrassed smile.

  Granny sighed inwardly and squinted into the none-too-clean depths of the future. She was definitely beginning to run out of imagination.