Maskerade (15 page)

‘Oh, is that the time? We'd better be going—' said Nanny.

‘Because, as a matter of fact, she sent me a picture,' said Goatberger, taking out his wallet.

‘I'm sure we're not at
all
interested,' said Nanny hurriedly, pulling on Granny's arm.

‘I'm
extremely
interested,' said Granny. She snatched a folded piece of paper out of Goatberger's hands, and peered at it.

‘Hah! Yes … that's Gytha Ogg all right,' she said. ‘Yes, indeed. I remember when that young artist came to Lancre for the summer.'

‘I wore my hair longer in those days,' muttered Nanny.

‘Just as well, considering,' said Granny. ‘I didn't know you had
copies
, though.'

‘Oh, you know how it is when you're young,' said Nanny dreamily. ‘It was doodle, doodle, doodle all summer long.' She awoke from her reverie. ‘And I still weigh the same now as I did then,' she added.

‘Except that it's shifted,' said Granny, nastily.

She handed the sketch back to Goatberger. ‘That's her all right,' she said. ‘But it's out by about sixty years and several layers of clothing. This is Gytha Ogg, right here.'

‘You're telling me
this
came up with Bananana Soup Surprise?'

‘Did you try it?' said Nanny.

‘Mr Cropper the head printer did, yes.'

‘Was he surprised?'

‘Not half as surprised as Mrs Cropper.'

‘It can take people like that,' said Nanny. ‘I think perhaps I overdo the nutmeg.'

Goatberger stared at her. Doubt was beginning to assail him. You only had to look at Nanny Ogg grinning back at you to believe she
could
write something like
The Joye of Snacks
.

‘Did you really write this?' he said.

‘From memory,' said Nanny, proudly.

‘And now she'd like some money,' said Granny.

Mr Goatberger's face twisted up as though he'd just eaten a lemon and washed it down with vinegar.

‘But we gave her the money
back
,' he said.

‘See?' said Nanny, her face falling. ‘I told you, Esme—'

‘She wants some more,' said Granny.

‘No, I don't—'

‘No, she doesn't!' Goatberger agreed.

‘She does,' said Granny. ‘She wants a little bit of money for every book you've sold.'

‘I don't expect to be treated like royalty,' said Nanny.
⁶

‘You shut up,' said Granny. ‘I know what you want. We want some money, Mr Goatberger.'

‘And what if I won't give it to you?'

Granny glared at him.

‘Then we shall go away and think about what to do next,' she said.

‘That's no idle threat,' said Nanny. ‘There's a lot of people've regretted Esme thinking about what to do next.'

‘Come back when you've thought, then!' snapped Goatberger. He stormed off. ‘I don't know, authors wanting to be paid, good grief—'

He disappeared among the stacks of books.

‘Er … do you think that could have gone better?' said Nanny.

Granny glanced at the table beside them. It was stacked with long sheets of paper. She nudged a dwarf, who had been watching the argument with some amusement.

‘What're these?' she said.

‘They're proofs for the Almanack.' He saw her blank expression. ‘They're sort of a trial run for the book so's we can check that all the spelling mistakes have been left in.'

Granny picked it up. ‘Come, Gytha,' she said.

‘I don't want trouble, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg as she hurried after her. ‘It's only money.'

‘It ain't money any more,' said Granny. ‘It's a way of keepin' score.'

Mr Bucket picked up a violin. It was in two pieces, held together by the strings. One of them broke.

‘Who'd do something like this?' he said. ‘Honestly, Salzella … what
is
the difference between opera and madness?'

‘Is this a trick question?'

‘No!'

‘Then I'd say: better scenery. Ah … I thought so …'

Salzella rooted among the destruction, and stood up with a letter in his hand.

‘Would you like me to open it?' he said. ‘It's addressed to you.'

Bucket shut his eyes.

‘Go on,' he said. ‘Don't bother about the details. Just tell me, how many exclamation marks?'

‘Five.'

‘Oh.'

Salzella passed the paper over.

Bucket read:

Dear Bucket

Whoops!

Ahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

Yrs

The Opera Ghost

‘What can we do?' he said. ‘One moment he writes polite little notes, the next he goes mad on paper!'

‘Herr Trubelmacher has got everyone out hunting for new instruments,' said Salzella.

‘Are violins more expensive than ballet shoes?'

‘There are few things in the world more expensive than ballet shoes. Violins happen to be among them,' said Salzella.

‘Further expense!'

‘It seems so, yes.'

‘But I thought the Ghost
liked
music! Herr Trubelmacher tells me the organ is beyond repair!!!'

He stopped. He was aware that he had exclaimed a little less rationally than a sane man should.

‘Oh, well,' Bucket continued wearily. ‘The show must go on, I suppose.'

‘Yes, indeed,' said Salzella.

Bucket shook his head. ‘How's it all going for tonight?'

‘I think it will work, if that's what you mean. Perdita seems to have a very good grasp of the part.'

‘And Christine?'

‘She has an astonishingly good grasp of wearing a dress. Between them, they make one prima donna.'

The proud owner of the Opera House got slowly to his feet. ‘It all seemed so simple,' he moaned. ‘I thought: opera, how hard can it be? Songs. Pretty girls dancing. Nice scenery. Lots of people handing over cash. Got to be better than the cut-throat world of yoghurt, I thought. Now everywhere I go there's—'

Something crunched under his shoe. He picked up the remains of a pair of half-moon spectacles.

‘These are Dr Undershaft's, aren't they?' he said. ‘What're they doing here?'

His eyes met Salzella's steady gaze.

‘Oh,
no
,' he groaned.

Salzella turned slightly, and stared hard at a big double-bass case leaning against the wall. He raised his eyebrows.

‘Oh,
no
,' said Bucket, again. ‘Go on. Open it. My hands have gone all sweaty …'

Salzella padded across to the case and grasped the lid. ‘Ready?'

Bucket nodded, wearily.

The case was flung open.

‘Oh, no!'

Salzella craned round to see.

‘Ah, yes,' he said. ‘A broken neck, and the body has been kicked in considerably. That'll cost a dollar or two to repair, and no mistake.'

‘And all the strings are busted! Are double basses more expensive to rebuild than violins?'

‘I am afraid that all musical instruments are incredibly expensive to repair, with the possible exception of the triangle,' said Salzella. ‘However, it could have been worse, hmm?'

‘What?'

‘Well, it
could
have been Dr Undershaft in there, yes?'

Bucket gaped at him, and then shut his mouth. ‘Oh. Yes. Of course. Oh, yes. That would have been worse. Yes. Bit of luck there, I suppose. Yes. Um.'

‘So that's an opera house, is it?' said Granny. ‘Looks like someone built a great big box and glued the architecture on afterwards.'

She coughed, and appeared to be waiting for something.

‘Can we have a look around?' said Nanny dutifully, aware that Granny's curiosity was equalled only by her desire not to show it.

‘It can't do any harm, I suppose,' said Granny, as if granting a big favour. ‘Seein' as we've nothing else to do right this minute.'

The Opera House was, indeed, that most efficiently multifunctional of building designs. It was a cube. But, as Granny had pointed out, the architect had suddenly realized late in the day that there ought to be
some
sort of decoration, and had shoved it on hurriedly, in a riot of friezes, pillars, corybants and curly bits. Gargoyles had colonized the higher reaches. The effect, seen from the front, was of a huge wall of tortured stone.

Round the back, of course, there was the usual
drab mess of windows, pipes and damp stone walls. One of the rules of a certain type of public architecture is that it only happens at the front.

Granny paused under a window. ‘Someone's singing,' she said. ‘Listen.'

‘La-la-la-la-la-LAH,' trilled someone. ‘Do-Re-Mi-Fah-So-La-Ti-Do …'

‘That's opera, right enough,' said Granny. ‘Sounds foreign to me.'

Nanny had an unexpected gift for languages; she could be comprehensibly incompetent in a new one within an hour or two. What she spoke was one step away from gibberish but it was authentically
foreign
gibberish. And she knew that Granny Weatherwax, whatever her other qualities, had an even bigger tin ear for languages than she did for music.

‘Er. Could be,' she said. ‘There's always a lot going on, I know that. Our Nev said they sometimes do different operations every night.'

‘How did he find that out?' said Granny.

‘Well, there was a lot of lead. That takes some shifting. He said he liked the noisy ones. He could hum along and also no one heard the hammering.'

The witches strolled onwards.

‘Did you notice young Agnes nearly bump into us back there?' said Granny.

‘Yes. It was all I could do not to turn around,' said Nanny.

‘She wasn't very pleased to see us, was she? I practically heard her gasp.'

‘That's very suspicious, if you ask me,' said Nanny. ‘I mean, she sees two friendly faces from back home, you'd expect her to come runnin' up …'

‘We're old friends, after all. Old friends of her grandma and her mum, anyway, and that's practic'ly the same.'

‘Remember those eyes in the teacup?' said Nanny. ‘She could be under the gaze of some strange occult force! We got to be careful. People can be very tricky when they're in the grip of a strange occult force. Remember Mr Scruple over in Slice?'

‘That wasn't a strange occult force. That was acid stomach.'

‘Well, it certainly seemed strangely occult for a while. Especially if the windows were shut.'

Their perambulation had taken them to the Opera House's stage-door.

Granny looked up at a line of posters.

‘La Triviata
,' she read aloud.
‘The Ring of the Nibelungingung
…?'

‘Well, basically there are two sorts of opera,' said Nanny, who also had the true witch's ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever. ‘There's your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign and it goes like “Oh oh oh, I am dyin', oh, I am dyin', oh, oh, oh, that's what I'm doin' ”, and there's your light opera, where they sing in foreign and it basically goes “Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!”, although sometimes they drink champagne instead. That's basically all of opera, reely.'

‘What? Either dyin' or drinkin' beer?'

‘Basically, yes,' said Nanny, contriving to suggest that this was the whole gamut of human experience.

‘And that's opera?'

‘We-ll … there might be
some
other stuff. But mostly it's stout or stabbin'.'

Granny was aware of a presence.

She turned.

A figure had emerged from the stage-door, carrying a poster, a bucket of glue and a brush.

It was a strange figure, a sort of neat scarecrow in clothes slightly too small for it, although, to be truthful, there were probably no clothes that would have fit that body. The ankles and wrists seemed infinitely extensible and independently guided.

It encountered the two witches standing at the poster board, and stopped politely. They could
see
the sentence marshalling itself behind the unfocused eyes.

‘Excuse me ladies! The show must go on!'

The words were all there and they made sense, but each sentence was fired out into the world as a unit.

Granny pulled Nanny to one side.

‘Thank you!'

They watched in silence as the man, with great and meticulous care, applied paste to a neat rectangle and then affixed the poster, smoothing every crease methodically.

‘What's your name, young man?' said Granny.

‘Walter!'

‘That's a nice beret you have there.'

‘My mum bought it for me!'

Walter chased the last air bubble to the edge of the paper and stood back. Then, completely ignoring the witches in his preoccupation with his task, he picked up the paste-pot and went back inside.

The witches stared at the new poster in silence.

‘Y'know, I wouldn't mind seein' an operation,' said Nanny, after a while. ‘Senior Basilica did give us the tickets.'

‘Oh, you know me,' said Granny. ‘Can't be having with that sort of thing at all.'

Nanny looked sideways at her, and grinned to herself. This was a familiar Weatherwax opening line. It meant: Of course I want to, but you've got to persuade me.

‘You're right, o' course,' she said. ‘It's for them folks in all their fine carriages. It's not for the likes of us.'

Granny looked hesitant for a moment.

‘I expect it's having ideas above our station,' Nanny went on. ‘I expect if we went in they'd say: Be off, you nasty ole crones …'

‘Oh, they would, would they?'

‘I don't expect they want common folk like what we are comin' in with all those smart nobby people,' said Nanny.