Discworld 39 - Snuff Read online

  “Rules of sparring by the Marquis of Fantailer,” said Vimes.

  “If they was written by a marquis I don’t want no truck with them!”

  Vimes nodded. “Willikins?”

  “I heard that, commander, and have recorded it in my notebook: ‘refused Fantailer.’ ”

  “Well then, Mr. Jefferson,” said Vimes. “I suggest we ask Mr. Jiminy to start the proceedings?”

  “I want your lackey to write down in that book of his that my mum won’t get put out of her cottage, whatever happens, right?”

  “It’s a deal,” said Vimes. “Willikins, please make a memorandum that Mr. Jefferson’s old mum should not be thrown out of her cottage, hit with sticks, put in the stocks, or otherwise manhandled in any way, understand?”

  Willikins, trying ineffectually to hide a smile, licked his pencil and wrote industriously. Vimes, less noisily, made a mental note and the note said: “The ferocity is draining out of this lad. He is wondering if he actually might get killed. I haven’t thrown a punch, not one little punch, and he is already preparing for the worst. Of course, the right way about it is to prepare for the best.”

  The crowd was growing by the second. Even as Vimes looked on, people came down the lane carrying a very old man on a mattress, their progress accelerated by his delight in hitting them on the back of the legs with his walking stick. Mothers toward the back of the crowd were holding up their children for a better look and, all unknown, every man had a weapon. It was like a peasants’ revolt, without the revolt and with a very polite class of peasant. Men touched their forelocks when Vimes looked in their direction, women curtsied, or at least bobbed up and down a bit, disturbingly out of sequence, like organ pedals trembling.

  Jiminy approached Vimes and the blacksmith cautiously and, to judge by the glistening of his face, very apprehensively. “Now then, gents, I’m choosing to consider this a little demonstration of fisticuffs, a jolly trial of strength and prowess such as may be found on any summer evening, all friends under the skin, okay?” There was a pleading look in his eyes as he went on. “And when you’ve got it out of your systems there’ll be a pint waiting for each of you on the bar. Please don’t break anything.” He produced an overused handkerchief from a waistcoat pocket and held it in the air. “When this touches the ground, gentlemen … .” he said, backing away very quickly.

  The slip of linen seemed to defy gravity for a while, but the moment it touched the ground Vimes caught the blacksmith’s boot in both hands as it swung toward him and said very quietly to the struggling man, “A bit previous, weren’t you? And what good has it done you? Hear them all sniggering? I’ll let you off, this time.”

  Vimes gave a push as he loosened his grip on the foot, causing Jethro to stagger backward. Vimes felt a certain pleasure in seeing the man losing it this early, but the blacksmith pulled himself together and rushed at him, and paused, possibly because Vimes was grinning.

  “That’s the ticket, my lad,” said Vimes, “you just saved yourself a dreadful pain in the unmentionables.” He made fists and beckoned suggestively to his bewildered adversary over the top of his left fist. The man came swinging and got a kick on the kneecap, which floored him, and he was picked up by Vimes, which metaphorically floored him again.

  “Whyever did you think I was going to box? That’s what we professionals call misdirection. You want to go for the hug? I would if I were a big bloke like you, but you ain’t going to get the chance.” Vimes shook his head sorrowfully. “Should have gone for the Marquis of Fantailer. I believe that has been carved on many a gravestone.” He took a generous pull of his cigar; the ash had yet to be disturbed.

  Enraged beyond belief, Jethro threw himself at Vimes and caught a glancing blow to his head, receiving at almost the same time a knee in the stomach which knocked all the breath out of him. They went down together with Vimes as the conductor of this orchestra. He made certain he ended on top, where he leaned down and hissed into Jethro’s ear, “Let’s see how smart you are, shall we? Are you a man who can control his temper? ’Cos if you aren’t, then I’ll give you a nose so wide that you’ll have to hold your handkerchief on the end of a stick. Don’t you, for one moment, think I’m not capable of it. But I reckon a blacksmith knows when to cool the metal, and I’m giving you a chance to say that at least you got the duke on the floor in front of all your friends, and we’ll stand up and shake hands like the gentlemen neither of us is, and the crowd will cheer and go into the pub to get happily ratted on the beer that I shall pay for. Are we men of one accord?”

  There was a muffled “Yes,” and Vimes stood up, took the blacksmith’s hand in his hand and raised it up high, which caused some slight puzzlement, but when he then said, “Sam Vimes invites you all to take a drink with him in Mr. Jiminy’s establishment!” everybody shrugged bewilderment aside to make room for the beer. The crowd surged into the pub, leaving the blacksmith and Vimes on their own—plus Willikins, who could be remarkably self-effacing when he wanted.

  “Blacksmiths should know about temper, too,” said Vimes, as the crowd dispersed pubward. “Sometimes cool is better than hot. I don’t know anything much about you, Mr. Jefferson, but the City Watch needs people who learn fast and I reckon you would soon make it to sergeant. We could use you as a smith, too. It’s amazing how dented the old armor can get when you’re standing on the faces of the poor.”

  Jethro stared down at his boots. “All right, you can beat me in a fight, but that doesn’t mean it’s right, all right? You don’t know the half of it!”

  There were sounds of merriment coming from the pub. Vimes wondered how embroidered that little scuffle would turn out to be. He turned back to the smith, who hadn’t moved. “Listen to me, you stupid young fool, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth! When I was a kid the only spoons I ever saw were made of wood and you were lucky if there was some edible food on the end of them. I was a street kid, understand? If I had been dumped out here I would have thought it was paradise, what with food jumping out on you from every hedge. But I became a copper because they paid you and I was taught how to be a copper by decent coppers, because believe me, mister, I wake every night knowing that I could have been something else. Then I found a good lady and if I were you, kid, I’d hope that I’d find one of them, too. So I smartened myself up and then one day Lord Vetinari—you have heard of him, haven’t you, kid? Well, he needed a man to get things done, and the title opens doors so that I don’t actually have to kick them open myself, and do you know what? I reckon my boots have seen so much crime down the years that they walk me toward it of their own accord, and I know there’s something that needs kicking. So do you, I can smell it on you. Tell me what it is.”

  Jethro still stared at his own boots and said nothing.

  Willikins cleared his throat. “I wonder, commander, if it might help if I had a little talk with the young man, from what you might call a less elevated position? Why don’t you take a look at the beauties of the local countryside?”

  Vimes nodded. “By all means, if you think it’ll do some good.” And he went away and examined a honeysuckle hedge with considerable interest, while Willikins, with his shiny gentleman’s gentleman shoes and his immaculate jacket, strolled over to Jethro, put an arm around him and said, “This is a stiletto I’m holding to your throat and it ain’t no ladies’ shoe, this is the real thing
, the cutting edge, as it were. You are a little twit, and I ain’t the commander and I will slice you to the bone if you make a move. Got that? Now don’t nod your head! Good, we are learning, aren’t we? Now, my lad, the commander here is trusted by the Diamond King of Trolls and the Low King of the Dwarfs, who would only have to utter a word for your measly carcass to come under the caress of a large number of versatile axes, and by Lady Margolotta of Uberwald, who trusts very few people, and by Lord Vetinari of Ankh-Morpork, who doesn’t trust anybody at all. Got that? Don’t nod! And you, my little man, have the damn nerve to doubt his word. I’m an easygoing sort of fellow, but that sort of thing leaves me right out of sorts, I don’t mind telling you. You understand? I said, do you understand? Oh, all right, you can nod now. Incidentally, young man, be careful who you call a lackey, all right? Some people might take violent exception to that sort of thing. A word to the wise, lad: I know the commander, and you thought about your old mum and what might happen to her and I reckon that is why I won’t be seeing you in lavender, because he is a sensitive soul at heart.”

  Willikins’ knife disappeared as quickly as it had come, and with the other hand the gentleman’s gentleman produced a small brush and tidied the blacksmith’s collar.

  “Willikins,” said Vimes from the distance. “Will you go for a little walk now, please?”

  When his manservant was loitering under a tree a little way further up the lane, Vimes said, “Sorry about that, but every man has his pride. I bear that in mind. So should you. I’m a copper, a policeman, and something here is calling to me. It seems to me that you have something you’d like me to know and it’s not just about who sits in the high castle, am I right? Something bad has happened, you are practically sweating it. Well?”

  Jethro leaned toward him and said, “Dead Man’s Copse on the hill. Midnight. I won’t wait.”

  The blacksmith then turned round and walked away without a glance behind.

  Vimes lit a fresh cigar and strolled toward the tree where Willikins was appearing to enjoy the landscape. He straightened up when he saw Vimes. “We’d better get a move on, sir. Dinner is at eight o’clock and her ladyship would like you to be smart. She sets a lot of store by your being smartly turned out, sir.”

  Vimes groaned. “Not the official tights?”

  “Happily not, sir, not in the country, but her ladyship was very specific about my bringing the plum-colored evening dress, sir.”

  “She says it makes me look dashing,” said Vimes morosely. “Do you think it makes me look dashing? Am I a dashing kind of person, would you say?” The birds started singing from a low branch of the tree.

  “I’d put you down as more the sprinting sort, sir,” said Willikins.

  They set off home, in silence for a while, which is to say that neither man spoke while wildlife sang, buzzed and screeched, eventually causing Vimes to say, “I wish I knew what the hell all those things are.”

  Willikins put his head on one side for a moment, then said, “Parkinson’s warbler, the deep-throated frog-eater and the common creed-waggler, sir.”

  “You know?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. I frequent the music halls, sir, and there’s always a bird or animal impersonator on the bill. It tends to stick. I also know seventy-three farmyard noises, my favorite of which is the sound of a farmer who has had one boot sucked from his foot by the muck he’s trying to avoid and has nowhere else to put his stockinged foot but in the said muck. Hugely amusing, sir.”

  They had reached the long drive to the Hall now, and gravel crunched beneath their boots. Under his breath, Vimes said, “I’ve arranged to meet young Mr. Jefferson at midnight in the copse on Hangman’s Hill. He wishes to tell me something important. Remind me, Willikins, what is a copse, exactly?”

  “Anything between a clump of trees and a small wood. Technically, sir, the one at the top of Hangman’s Hill is a beech hanger. That just means, well, a small beech wood on top of a hill. You remember Mad Jack Ramkin? The bloke that got it made thirty feet higher at great expense? He had the beech trees planted on the top.”

  Vimes liked the crunching of the gravel; it would mask the sound of their conversation. “I talked to the blacksmith with, I would swear, no one else in earshot. But this is the country, yes, Willikins?”

  “There was a man setting rabbit snares in the hedge behind you,” said Willikins. “Perfectly normal activity, although to my mind he took too long over it.”

  They crunched onward for a while, and Vimes said, “Tell me, Willikins. If a man had arranged to meet another man at midnight in a place with a name like Dead Man’s Copse, on Hangman’s Hill, what would you consider to be his most sensible course of action, given that his wife had forbidden him to bring weapons to his country house?”

  Willikins nodded. “Why, sir, given your maxim that everything is a weapon if you choose to think of it as such, I would advise said man to see whether he has a compatriot what has, for example, acquired the keys to a cabinet that contains a number of superbly made carving knives, ideal for close fighting; and I personally would include a side order of cheesewire, sir, in conformance with my belief that the only important thing in a fight to the death is that the death should not be yours.”

  “Can’t carry cheesewire, man! Not the Commander of the Watch!”

  “Quite so, commander, and may I therefore advise your brass knuckles—the gentleman’s alternative? I know you never travel without them, sir. There’s some vicious people around and I know you have to be among them.”

  “Look, Willikins, I don’t like to involve you in all this. It’s only a hunch, after all.”

  Willikins waved this away. “You wouldn’t keep me out of it for a big clock, sir, because all this is tickling my fancy as well. I shall lay out a selection of cutting edges for you in your dressing room, sir, and I myself will go up to the copse half an hour before you’re due to be there, with my trusty bow and an assortment of favorite playthings. It’s nearly a full moon, clear skies, there’ll be shadows everywhere, and I’ll be standing in the darkest one of them.”

  Vimes looked at him for a moment and said, “Could I please amend that suggestion? Could you not be there in the second darkest shadow one hour before midnight, to see who steps into the darkest shadow?”

  “Ah yes, that’s why you command the watch, sir,” said Willikins, and to Vimes’s shock there was a hint of a tear in the man’s voice. “You’re listening to the street, aren’t you, sir, yes?”

  Vimes shrugged. “No streets here, Willikins!”

  Willikins shook his head. “Once a street boy always a street boy, sir. It comes with us, in the pinch. Mothers go, fathers go—if we ever knew who they were—but the Street, well, the Street looks after us. In the pinch it keeps us alive.”

  Willikins darted ahead of Vimes and rang the doorbell, so that the footman had the door open by the time Vimes came up the steps. “You’ve got just enough time to listen to Young Sam read to you, sir,” Willikins added, making his way up the stairs. “Wonderful thing, reading, I wish I’d learned it when I was a kid. Her ladyship will be in her dressing room and guests will be arriving in about half an hour. Must go, sir. I’ve got to teach that fat toad of a butler his manners, sir.”

  Vimes winced. “You’re not allowed to strangle butlers, Willikins. I’m sure I read it in a book of etique
tte.”

  Willikins gave him a look of mock offense. “No garrotting will be involved, sir, Willikins went on, opening the door to Vimes’s dressing room, “but he is a snob of the first water. Never did meet a butler who wasn’t. I just have to give him an orientation lesson.”

  “Well, he is the butler, and this is his house,” said Vimes.

  “No, sir, it’s your house, and since I am your personal manservant I, by the irrevocable laws of the servants’ hall, outrank every one of the lazy buggers! I’ll show them how we do things in the real world, sir, don’t you worry—”

  He was interrupted by a heavy knock at the door, followed by a determined rattling of the doorknob. Willikins opened the door and Young Sam stomped in and announced, “Reading!”

  Vimes picked up his son and sat him on a chair. “How was your afternoon, my lad?”

  “Do you know,” said Young Sam, as if imparting the results of strict research, “cows do really big floppy poos, but sheep do small poos, like chocolates.”

  Vimes tried not to look at Willikins, who was shaking with suppressed laughter. He managed to keep his own expression solemn and said, “Well, of course, sheep are smaller.”

  Young Sam considered this. “Cow poos go flop,” he said. “It never said that in Where’s My Cow?” Young Sam’s voice betrayed a certain annoyance that this important information had been withheld. “Miss Felicity Beedle wouldn’t have left it out.”

  Vimes sighed. “I just bet she wouldn’t.”

  Willikins opened the door. “I’ll leave you gentlemen to it, then, and see you later, sir.”

  “Willikins?” said Vimes, just as the man had his hand on the doorknob. “You appear to think that my brass knuckles are inferior to yours. Is that so?”