Unseen Academicals (40 page)

‘Fancy Mister Nutt being a blacksmith,’ said Juliet.

‘He’s a man of many parts,’ said Glenda.

Juliet’s brow wrinkled. ‘’ow many parts?’

‘It’s just a figure of speech, Juliet. Off you go now.’ She needed time to think. Those strange flying women. Mister Nutt. It was all a lot to take. You start the day and it’s just another day and here you are, having mercifully not ended up as a highwayman, sitting in another city with
nothing more than the clothes you’re standing up in, not knowing what is going to happen next.

Which, in a way, was exciting. She had to analyse that feeling for several moments because excitement was not a regular feature of her life. Pies, on the whole, do not excite. She got up and wandered unheeded through the crowds, with the vague idea of seeing what the kitchens were like, but found her path blocked by someone whose sweating face, flustered air and rotund body suggested he was the innkeeper. ‘If you could just wait a moment, ma’am,’ he said to her and then addressed a woman who was emerging from what looked like a private dining room. ‘So nice to see you again, your ladyship,’ he said, bobbing up and down a little. ‘It’s always an honour to have you grace our humble establishment.’

Ladyship.

Glenda looked up at the woman who was everything she had pictured when Nutt had first talked about her. Tall, thin, dark, forbidding, to be feared. Her expression was stern and she said, in what to Glenda were posh tones, ‘Far too noisy in here.’

‘But the beef was superb,’ said another voice and Glenda realized that Ladyship had almost eclipsed a smaller woman, quite pleasant, not particularly tall and with a slightly fussy air about her.

‘Are you Lady Margolotta?’ said Glenda.

The tall lady gave her a look of brief disdain and swept on towards the main doors, but her companion stopped and said, ‘Do you have business with her ladyship?’

‘Is she coming to Ankh-Morpork?’ Glenda asked. ‘Everybody knows she’s Lord Vetinari’s squeeze.’ She felt instantly embarrassed as she said the word; it conjured up images that simply could not fit into the available space in her brain.

‘Really?’ said the woman. ‘They are certainly very close friends.’

‘Well, I want to talk to her about Mister Nutt,’ said Glenda.

The woman gave her a worried look and pulled her over to an empty bench. ‘There has been a problem?’ she said, sitting down and patting the wood beside her.

‘She told him he was worthless,’ said Glenda. ‘And sometimes I think all he worries about is being worthy.’

‘Are you worthy?’ said the woman.

‘What sort of question is that to ask a stranger?’

‘An interesting and possibly revealing one. Do you think the world is a better place with you in it, and would you do me the courtesy of actually thinking about your answer rather than pulling one off the “affronted” rack? I’m afraid there’s far too much of that these days. People believe that acting and thinking are the same thing.’

Faced with that, Glenda settled for, ‘Yes.’

‘You’ve made it better, have you?’

‘Yes. I’ve helped lots of people and I invented the Ploughman’s Pie.’

‘Did the people you helped want to be helped?’

‘What? Yes, they came and asked.’

‘Good. And the Ploughman’s Pie?’

Glenda told her.

‘Ah, you must be the cook at Unseen University,’ said the woman. ‘Which means that you have access to rather more than the average cook and, therefore, I would deduce that to keep the pickled onions crisp in the pie you put them in a cold room at very nearly freezing point for some time immediately before baking, possibly wrapping them in cheese for the sake of temporary insulation, and, if you have assembled your pie correctly and paid attention to temperatures, I think that would do the trick.’ She paused. ‘Hello?’

‘Are you a cook?’ said Glenda.

‘Good grief, no!’

‘So you worked it out, just like that? Mister Nutt told me her ladyship employs
very
clever people.’

‘Well, I’m embarrassed to say it, but that is true.’

‘But she shouldn’t have told Mister Nutt that he’s worthless. She shouldn’t say that to people.’

‘But he was worthless, yes? He couldn’t even talk properly when he was found. Surely what she has done has helped him?’

‘But he frets all the time and it’s got out now that he’s an orc. What’s that all about?’

‘And is he, in your mind, doing anything particularly orcish?’

Reluctantly, Glenda said, ‘Sometimes his fingernails turn into claws.’

The woman looked suddenly concerned. ‘And what does he do then?’

‘Well, nothing,’ said Glenda. ‘They just sort of…go back in again. But he makes wonderful candles,’ she added quickly. ‘He’s always making things. It’s as if…worth is something that drains away all the time so you have to keep topping it up.’

‘Possibly, now you put it that way, she has been a little too brisk with him.’

‘Does she love him?’ asked Glenda.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I mean, has anyone ever loved him?’

‘Oh, I think she does, in her way,’ said the woman. ‘Although she’s a vampire, you know. They tend to see the world rather differently.’

‘Well, if I met her I’d give her a piece of my mind,’ said Glenda. ‘Muddling him about. Setting those wretched flying ladies on him. I wouldn’t let her do that sort of thing.’

‘She’s immensely strong, I’m led to believe,’ said the woman.

‘That doesn’t give her the right,’ said Glenda. ‘And shall I tell you something? Mister Nutt is right here. Oh yes, out in the yard, shoeing one of the horses for the Lancre Flyer. He really is amazing.’

‘It sounds like it,’ said the woman with a faint little smile. ‘You certainly seem to be a vehement supporter.’

Glenda hesitated. ‘Is that something to do with foxes?’ she said.

‘It means with great passion,’ said the woman. ‘Do you have a great passion for Mister Nutt, Miss Sugarbean? And remember, please, I do like people to do me the honour of thinking before they speak.’

‘Well, I like him a lot,’ said Glenda hotly.

‘That is charming,’ said the woman. ‘It does occur to me that Mister Nutt might have achieved more worth than I had previously thought.’

‘So you tell her ladyship what I said,’ said Glenda, feeling her neck on fire with blushes. ‘Mister Nutt has got friends.’

‘Indeed I will,’ said the woman, standing up. ‘And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m sure our coach is about to depart. I must fly.’

‘Remember to tell her what I said!’ Glenda shouted after her.

She saw the woman turn to smile at her and then she was lost as a party arriving from a new coach hurried in from the cold night air.

Glenda, who had stood up at the same time as the woman, sat down heavily. Who on earth did that woman think she was? Her ladyship’s librarian, probably. Nutt had mentioned her several times. Altogether too many ideas above her station for Glenda’s liking. She hadn’t even had the decency to give Glenda her name.

The faint, distant hunting horns of sheer terror began to sound in the back of her mind. Had the woman asked Glenda her name? No! But she’d certainly known it and how would she know about the ‘cook’ at Unseen University? And she’d been so quick, she’d worked out the Ploughman’s Pie with a snap of her fingers. That little part of her that had first been liberated by the sherry chimed in with,
The trouble with you is that you make assumptions. You see something and you think you know what you’ve seen. She certainly didn’t sound like a librarian, did she?

Very slowly, Glenda raised her right hand into a fist and lowered it into her mouth, and bit down very hard in an attempt to somehow retrieve the last fifteen minutes from the records of the universe and replace them with something far less embarrassing, like her knickers falling down.

Even here, late into the night, the forge was the heart of attention. Coaches were arriving and leaving constantly. The inn did not run according to the sun, it ran according to the timetable, and aimless people waiting for their connections gravitated to the forge as a free show and a place of comfort in the chilly night air.

Nutt was shoeing a horse. Trev had seen horses being shod before, but never like this. The animal stood as if transfixed, trembling very slightly. When Nutt wanted it to move, he clicked his tongue. When he wanted its leg raised, another click caused this to happen. Trev felt that
he wasn’t watching a man shoeing a horse, but a master demonstrating his skills to a world of amateurs. When the shoe was on, the horse walked backwards in front of the crowd, for all the world like a fashion model, turning as Nutt moved a hand or made a clicking noise. It didn’t seem to be a particularly happy horse, but, great heavens, it was certainly an obedient one. ‘Yes, that all seems fine,’ Nutt said.

‘How much is that going to cost us?’ said the coachman. ‘Wonderful job, if I may say so.’

‘How much? How much? How much?’ said Nutt, turning it over in his mind. ‘Have I earned worth, sir?’

‘I should say so, mate. I’ve never seen a horse shod as smooth as that.’

‘Then worth will do,’ said Nutt. ‘And a ride for myself and my three friends back to Ankh-Morpork.’

‘An’ five dollars,’ said Trev, coming away from his lounging spot near the wall with the speed of money.

The coachman sniffed. ‘A bit steep,’ he said.

‘What?’ said Trev. ‘For a late-night job? To better than Burleigh and Stronginthearm specification? Not a bad deal, I think.’

A murmur from the other watchers backed Trev up. ‘I never seen anyone do anything like that,’ said Juliet. ‘He’d ’ave ’ad that ’orse dancing if you’d asked ’im.’

The coachman winked at Trev. ‘All right, lad. What can I say? Old Havacook there is a good lad, but a bit bad tempered, as it goes. Once kicked a coachman through the wall. I never thought I’d see him stand there and lift ’is leg up like a trained lap-dog. Your chum has earned his money and his ride.’

‘Please take him away,’ said Nutt. ‘But hold him with care because when he gets a little way away from me he might get a tiny bit frisky.’

The crowd dispersed. Nutt methodically damped down the forge and started to pack his tools into the box. ‘If we’re going to go back, we’d better go now. Has anyone seen Miss Glenda?’

‘Here,’ said Glenda, advancing out of the shadows. ‘Trev, you and Jools go and get us some seats on the coach. I need to talk to Mister Nutt.’

‘Her ladyship was here,’ said Glenda when they’d gone.

‘I would not be surprised,’ said Nutt calmly, snapping the catches shut on his box. ‘Just about everybody passes through here and she travels a great deal.’

‘Why were you running away?’

‘Because I know what will happen,’ said Nutt. ‘I am an orc. It’s as simple as that.’

‘But the people on the bus were on your side,’ said Glenda.

Nutt flexed his hands and the claws slid out, just for a moment. ‘And tomorrow?’ he said. ‘And if something goes wrong? Everybody knows orcs will tear your arms off. Everybody knows orcs will tear your head off. Everybody knows these things. That is not good.’

‘Well, then, why are you coming back?’ Glenda demanded.

‘Because you are kind and came after me. How could I refuse? But it does not change the things that everybody knows.’

‘But every time you make a candle and every time you shoe a horse, you change the things that everybody knows,’ said Glenda. ‘You know that orcs were—’ She hesitated. ‘Sort of made?’

‘Oh, yes, it was in the book.’

She nearly exploded. ‘Well, then, why didn’t you tell me?!’

‘Is it important? We are what we are now.’

‘But you don’t have to be!’ Glenda yelled. ‘Everybody knows trolls eat people and spit them out. Everybody knows dwarfs cut your legs off. But at the same time everybody knows that what everybody knows is wrong. And orcs didn’t decide to be like they are. People will understand that.’

‘It will be a dreadful burden.’

‘I’ll help!’
Glenda was shocked at the speed of her response and then mumbled, ‘I’ll help.’

The coals in the forge crackled as they settled down. Fires in a busy forge seldom die out completely. After a while, Glenda said, ‘You wrote that poem for Trev, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, Miss Glenda. I hope she liked it.’

Glenda thought she’d better raise this carefully. ‘I think I ought to tell
you that she didn’t understand a lot of the words
exactly
. I sort of had to translate it for her.’ It hadn’t been too difficult, she reckoned. Most love poems were pretty much the same under the curly writing.

‘Did
you
like it?’ said Nutt.

‘It was a wonderful poem,’ said Glenda.

‘I wrote it for you,’ said Nutt. He was looking at her with an expression that stirred together fear and defiance in equal measure.

The cooling embers brightened up at this. After all, a forge has a soul. As if they had been waiting there, the responses lined themselves up in front of Glenda’s tongue. Whatever you do next is going to be very important, she told herself. Really, extremely, very important. Don’t start wondering about what Mary the bloody housemaid would do in one of those cheap novels you read, because Mary was made up by someone with a name suspiciously like an anagram for people like you. She is not real and you are.

‘We had better get on the coach,’ said Nutt, picking up his box.

Glenda gave up on the thinking and burst into tears. It has to be said that they were not the gentle tears they would have been from Mary the housemaid, but the really big long-drawn-out blobby ones you get from someone who very rarely cries. They were gummy, with a hint of snot in there as well. But they were
real
. Mary the housemaid would just not have been able to match them.

So, of course, it will be just like Trev Likely to turn up out of the shadows and say, ‘They’re calling the coach now—Are you two all right?’

Nutt looked at Glenda. Tears aren’t readily retractable, but she managed to balance a smile on them. ‘I believe this to be the case,’ said Nutt.

Travelling on a fast coach, on even a mild autumn night, those passengers on the roof experience the temperature that can freeze doorknobs. There are leather covers and rugs of various age, thickness and smell. Survival is only possible by wrapping yourself in the biggest cocoon you can achieve, preferably with somebody else next to you;
two people can heat up faster than one. In theory, all of this could lead to hanky panky, but the seats of the coach and the rockiness of the road mean that such things are not uppermost in the traveller’s mind, which dreams longingly of cushions. Furthermore, there was a fine rain now.