Carpe Jugulum Read online

  On the other side of the sky the Hublights were burning around the mountains at the center of the world, bright enough even to fight the pale light of the moon. Green and gold flames danced in the air over the central mountains. It was rare to see them at this time of the year, and Granny wondered what that might signify.

  Slice was perched along the sides of a cleft in the mountains that couldn’t be dignified by the name of valley. In the moonlight she saw the pale upturned face waiting in the shadows of garden as she came into land.

  “Evening, Mr. Ivy,” she said, leaping off. “Upstairs, is she?”

  “In the barn,” said Ivy, flatly. “The cow kicked her…hard.”

  Granny’s expression stayed impassive.

  “We shall see,” she said, “what may be done.”

  In the barn, one look at Mrs. Patternoster’s face told her how little that might now be. The woman wasn’t a witch, but she knew all the practical midwifery that can be picked up in an isolated village, be it from cows, goats, horses or humans.

  “It’s bad,” she whispered, as Granny looked at the moaning figure on the straw. “I reckon we’ll lose both of them…or maybe just one…”

  There was, if you were listening for it, just the suggestion of a question in that sentence. Granny focused her mind.

  “It’s a boy,” she said.

  Mrs. Patternoster didn’t bother to wonder how Granny knew, but her expression indicated that a little more weight had been added to a burden.

  “I’d better go and put it to John Ivy, then,” she said.

  She’d barely moved before Granny Weatherwax’s hand locked on her arm.

  “He’s no part in this,” she said.

  “But after all, he is the—”

  “He’s no part in this.”

  Mrs. Patternoster looked into the blue stare and knew two things. One was that Mr. Ivy had no part in this, and the other was that anything that happened in this barn was never, ever, going to be mentioned again.

  “I think I can bring ’em to mind,” said Granny, letting go and rolling up her sleeves. “Pleasant couple, as I recall. He’s a good husband, by all accounts.” She poured warm water from its jug into the bowl that the midwife had set up on a manger.

  Mrs. Patternoster nodded.

  “Of course, it’s difficult for a man working these steep lands alone,” Granny went on, washing her hands. Mrs. Patternoster nodded again, mournfully.

  “Well, I reckon you should take him into the cottage, Mrs. Patternoster, and make him a cup of tea,” Granny commanded. “You can tell him I’m doing all I can.”

  This time the midwife nodded gratefully.

  When she had fled, Granny laid a hand on Mrs. Ivy’s damp forehead.

  “Well now, Florence Ivy,” she said, “let us see what might be done. But first of all…no pain…”

  As she moved her head she caught sight of the moon through the unglazed window. Between the light and the dark…well, sometimes that’s where you had to be.

  INDEED.

  Granny didn’t bother to turn around.

  “I thought you’d be here,” she said, as she knelt down in the straw.

  WHERE ELSE? said Death.

  “Do you know who you’re here for?”

  THAT IS NOT MY CHOICE. ON THE VERY EDGE YOU WILL ALWAYS FIND SOME UNCERTAINTY.

  Granny felt the words in her head for several seconds, like little melting cubes of ice. On the very, very edge, then, there had to be…judgment.

  “There’s too much damage here,” she said, at last. “Too much.”

  A few minutes later she felt the life stream past her. Death had the decency to leave without a word.

  When Mrs. Patternoster tremulously knocked on the door and pushed it open, Granny was in the cow’s stall. The midwife saw her stand up holding a piece of thorn.

  “Been in the beast’s leg all day,” she said. “No wonder it was fretful. Try and make sure he doesn’t kill the cow, you understand? They’ll need it.”

  Mrs. Patternoster glanced down at the rolled-up blanket in the straw. Granny had tactfully placed it out of sight of Mrs. Ivy, who was sleeping now.

  “I’ll tell him,” said Granny, brushing off her dress. “As for her, well, she’s strong and young and you know what to do. You keep an eye on her, and me or Nanny Ogg will drop in when we can. If she’s up to it, they may need a wet nurse up at the castle, and that may be good for everyone.”

  It was doubtful that anyone in Slice would defy Granny Weatherwax, but Granny saw the faintest gray shadow of disapproval in the midwife’s expression.

  “You still reckon I should’ve asked Mr. Ivy?” she said.

  “That’s what I would have done…” the woman mumbled.

  “You don’t like him? You think he’s a bad man?” said Granny. adjusting her hat pins.

  “No!”

  “Then what’s he ever done to me, that I should hurt him so?”

  Agnes had to run to keep up. Nanny Ogg, when roused, could move as though powered by pistons.

  “But we get a lot of priests up here, Nanny!”

  “Not like the Omnians!” snapped Nanny. “We had ’em up here last year. A couple of ’em knocked at my door!”

  “Well, that is what a door is f—”

  “And they shoved a leaflet under it saying ‘Repent!’” Nanny Ogg went on. “Repent? Me? Cheek! I can’t start repenting at my time of life. I’d never get any work done. Anyway,” she added, “I ain’t sorry for most of it.”

  “You’re getting a bit excited, I think—”

  “They set fire to people!” said Nanny.

  “I think I read somewhere that they used to, yes,” said Agnes, panting with the effort of keeping up. “But that was a long time ago, Nanny! The ones I saw in Ankh-Morpork just handed out leaflets and preached in a big tent and sang rather dreary songs—”

  “Hah! The leopard does not change his shorts, my girl!”

  They ran along a corridor, and out from behind a screen into the hubbub of the Great Hall.

  “Knee-deep in nobs,” said Nanny, craning. “Ah, there’s our Shawn…”

  Lancre’s standing army was lurking by a pillar, probably in the hope that no one would see him in his footman’s powdered wig, which had been made for a much bigger footman.

  The kingdom didn’t have much of an executive arm of government, and most of its actual hands belonged to Nanny Ogg’s youngest son. Despite the earnest efforts of King Verence, who was quite a forward-looking ruler in a nervous kind of way, the people of Lancre could not be persuaded to accept a democracy at any price and the place had not, regrettably, attracted much in the way of government. A lot of the bits it couldn’t avoid were done by Shawn. He emptied the palace privies, delivered its sparse mail, guarded the walls, operated the Royal Mint, balanced the budget, helped out the gardener in his spare time and, on those occasions these days when it was felt necessary to man the borders, and Verence felt that yellow and black striped poles did give a country such a professional look, he stamped passports, or at a pinch any other pieces of paper the visitor could produce, such as the back of an envelope, with a stamp he’d carved quite nicely out of half a potato. He took it all very seriously. At times like this, he buttled when Spriggins the butler was not on duty, or if an extra hand was needed he footed as well.

  “Evening, our Shawn,” said Nanny Ogg. “I see you’ve got that dead lamb on your head again.”

  “Aoow, Mum,” said Shawn, trying to adjust the wig.

  “Where’s this priest that’s doing the Naming?” said Nanny.

  “What, Mum? Dunno, Mum. I stopped shouting out the names half an hour ago and got on to serving the bits of cheese on sticks—aoow, Mum, you shouldn’t take that many, Mum!”*

  Nanny Ogg sucked the cocktail goodies off four sticks in one easy movement, and looked speculatively at the throng.

  “I’m going to have a word with young Verence,” said Nanny.

  “He is the king, Nanny,” sa
id Agnes.

  “That’s no reason for him to go around acting like he was royalty.”

  “I think it is, actually.”

  “None of that cheek. You just go and find this Omnian and keep an eye on him.”

  “What should I look for?” said Agnes sourly. “A column of smoke?”

  “They all wear black,” said Nanny firmly. “Hah! Typical!”

  “Well? So do we.”

  “Right! But ours is…ours is…” Nanny thumped her chest, causing considerable ripples, “ours is the right black, right? Now, off you go and look inconspicuous,” added Nanny, a lady wearing a two-foot-tall pointed black hat. She stared around at the crowd again, and nudged her son.

  “Shawn, you did deliver an invite to Esme Weatherwax, didn’t you?”

  He looked horrified. “Of course, Mum.”

  “Shove it under her door?”

  “No, Mum. You know she gave me an ear-bashin’ when the snails got at that postcard last year. I put it under a stone, good and tight.”

  “There’s a good boy,” said Nanny.

  Lancre people didn’t bother much with letterboxes. Mail was infrequent but biting gales were not. Why have a slot in the door to let in unsolicited winds? So letters were left under large stones, wedged firmly in flowerpots or slipped under the door.

  There were never very many.* Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants. The chips on some shoulders had been passed down for generations. Some had antique value. A bloody good grudge, Lancre reckoned, was like a fine old wine. You looked after it carefully and left it to your children.

  You never wrote to anyone. If you had anything to say, you said it to their face. It kept everything nice and hot.

  Agnes edged into the crowd, feeling stupid. She often did. Now she knew why Magrat Garlick had always worn those soppy floppy dresses and never wore the pointy hat. Wear the pointy hat and dress in black, and on Agnes there was plenty of black to go around, and everyone saw you in a certain way. You were A Witch. It had its good points. Among the bad ones was the fact that people turned to you when they were in trouble and never thought for a moment that you couldn’t cope.

  But she got a bit of respect, even from people who could remember her before she’d been allowed to wear the hat. They tended to make way for her, although people tended to make way in any case for Agnes when she was in full steam.

  “Evening, miss…”

  She turned, and saw Hodgesaargh in full official regalia.

  It was important not to smile at times like this, so Agnes kept a straight face and tried to ignore Perdita’s hysterical laughter at the back of her mind.

  She’d seen Hodgesaargh occasionally, around the edges of the woods or up on the moors. Usually the royal falconer was vainly fighting off his hawks, who attacked him for a pastime, and in the case of King Henry kept picking him up and dropping him again in the belief that he was a giant tortoise.

  It wasn’t that he was bad falconer. A few other people in Lancre kept hawks and reckoned he was one of the best trainers in the mountains, possibly because he was so single-minded about it. It was just that he trained every feathery little killing machine so well that it became unable to resist seeing what he tasted like.

  He didn’t deserve it. Nor did he deserve his ceremonial costume. Usually, when not in the company of King Henry, he just wore working leathers and about three sticking plasters, but what he was wearing now had been designed hundreds of years before by someone with a lyrical view of the countryside and who had never had to run through a bramble bush with a gerfalcon hanging on their ear. It had a lot of red and gold in it and would have looked much better on someone two feet taller who had the legs for red stockings. The hat was best not talked about, but if you had to, you’d talk about it in terms of something big, red and floppy. With a feather in it.

  “Miss Nitt?” said Hodgesaargh.

  “Sorry…I was looking at your hat.”

  “It’s good, isn’t it,” said Hodgesaargh amiably. “This is William. She’s a buzzard. But she thinks she’s a chicken. She can’t fly. I’m having to teach her how to hunt.”

  Agnes was craning her neck for any signs of overtly religious activity, but the incongruity of the slightly bedraggled creature on Hodgesaargh’s wrist brought her gaze back down again.

  “How?” she said.

  “She walks into the burrows and kicks the rabbits to death. And I’ve almost cured her of crowing. Haven’t I, William?”

  “William?” said Agnes. “Oh…yes.” To a falconer, she remembered, all hawks were “she.”

  “Have you seen any Omnians here?” she whispered, leaning down toward him.

  “What kind of bird are they, miss?” said the falconer uneasily. He always seemed to have a preoccupied air when not discussing hawks, like a man with a big dictionary who couldn’t find the index.

  “Oh, er…don’t worry about it, then.” She stared at William again and said, “How? I mean, how does a bird like that think he’s—she’s a chicken?”

  “Can happen all too easy, miss,” said Hodgesaargh. “Thomas Peerless over in Bad Ass pinched an egg and put it under a broody hen, miss. He didn’t take the chicken away in time. So William thought if her mum was a chicken, then so was she.”

  “Well, that’s—”

  “And that’s what happens, miss. When I raise them from eggs I don’t do that. I’ve got a special glove, miss—”

  “That’s absolutely fascinating, but I’d better go,” said Agnes, quickly.

  “Yes, miss.”

  She’d spotted the quarry, walking across the hall.

  There was something unmistakable about him. It was as if he was a witch. It wasn’t that his black robe ended at the knees and became a pair of legs encased in gray socks and sandals, or that his hat had a tiny crown but a brim big enough to set out your dinner on. It was because wherever he walked, he was in a little empty space that seemed to move around him, just like you got around witches. No one wanted to get too close to witches.

  She couldn’t see his face. He was making a beeline for the buffet table.

  “Excuse me, Miss Nitt?”

  Shawn had appeared at her side. He stood very stiffly, because if he made any sudden turns the oversized wig tended to spin on his head.

  “Yes, Shawn?” said Agnes.

  “The queen wants a word, miss,” said Shawn.

  “With me?”

  “Yes, miss. She’s up in the Ghastly Green Drawing Room, miss.” Shawn swiveled slowly. His wig stayed facing the same way.

  Agnes hesitated. It was a royal command, she supposed, even if it was only from Magrat Garlick as was, and as such it superseded anything Nanny had asked her to do. Anyway, she had spotted the priest, and it was not as though he was going to set fire to everyone over the canapés. She’d better go.

  A little hatch shot open behind the doleful Igor.

  “Why’ve we stopped this time?”

  “Troll’th in the way, marthter.”

  “A what?”

  Igor rolled his eyes. “A troll’th in the way,” he said.

  The hatch shut. There was a whispered conversation inside the coach. The hatch opened.

  “You mean a troll?”

  “Yeth, marthter.”

  “Run it down!”

  The troll advanced, holding a flickering torch above its head. At some point recently someone had said “this troll needs a uniform” and had found that the only thing in the armory that would fit was the helmet, and then only if you attached it to his head with string.

  “The old Count wouldn’t have told me to run it down,” Igor muttered, not quite under his breath. “But, then, he wath a gentleman.”

  “What was that?” a female voice snapped.

  The troll reached the coach and banged its knuckles on its helmet respectfully.

  “Evenin’,” it said. “Dis is a bit embarrassin’. You know a po
le?”

  “Pole?” said Igor suspiciously.

  “It are a long wooden fing—”

  “Yeth? Well? What about it?”

  “I’d like you to imagine, right, dat dere’s a black an’ yellow striped one across dis road, right? Only ’cos we’ve only got der one, an’ it’s bein’ used up on der Copperhead road tonight.”

  The hatch slid open.

  “Get a move on, man! Run it down!”

  “I could go an’ get it if you like,” said the troll, shifting nervously from one huge foot to the other. “Only it wouldn’t be here till tomorrow, right? Or you could pretend it’s here right now, an’ then I could pretend to lift it up, and dat’d be okay, right?”

  “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.