Witches Abroad (9 page)

‘Can't see many people about,' said Granny.

‘Maybe they turn in early in these parts,' said Nanny Ogg.

‘It's hardly even sunset,' said Magrat. ‘Perhaps we ought to go up to that castle?'

They all looked at the castle.

‘No-o-o,' said Granny slowly, speaking for all of them. ‘We know our place.'

So they landed, instead, in what was presumably the town square. A dog barked, somewhere behind the buildings. A shutter banged closed.

‘Very
friendly,' said Granny. She walked over to a larger building that had a sign, unreadable under the grime, over the door. She gave the woodwork a couple of thumps.

‘Open up!' she said.

‘No, no, you don't say that,' said Magrat. She shouldered her way past, and tapped on the door. ‘Excuse me! Bona fide travellers!'

‘Bona what?' said Nanny.

‘That's what you need to say,' said Magrat. ‘Any inn has got to open up for bona fide travellers and give them succour.'

‘Has it?' said Nanny, with interest. ‘That sounds like a thing worth knowing.'

The door remained shut.

‘Let me 'ave a go,' said Nanny. ‘I know some foreign lingo.'

She hammered on the door.

‘Openny vous, gunga din, chop-chop, pretty damn quick,' she said.

Granny Weatherwax listened carefully.

‘That's speaking foreign, is it?'

‘My grandson Shane is a sailor,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘You'd be amazed, the words he learns about foreign parts.'

‘I expects I would,' said Granny. ‘And I 'opes they works better for him.'

She thumped on the door again. And this time it opened, very slowly. A pale face peered around it.

‘Excuse me –' Magrat began.

Granny pushed the door open. The face's owner had been leaning on it; they could hear the scrape of his boots over the floor as he was shoved gently backwards.

‘Blessings be on this house,' Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people's minds on what
other
things might be on this house, and reminded them about any fresh cakes, newly-baked bread or bundles of useful old clothing that might have temporarily escaped their minds.

It looked like one of the other things had been on this house already.

It
was
an inn, of sorts. The three witches had never seen such a cheerless place in their lives. But it was quite crowded. A score or more pale-faced people watched them solemnly from benches around the walls.

Nanny Ogg sniffed.

‘Cor,' she said. ‘Talk about garlic!' And, indeed, bunches of it hung from every beam. ‘You can't have too much garlic, I always say. I can see I'm going to like it here.'

She nodded to a white-faced man behind the bar.

‘Gooden day, big-feller mine host! Trois beers pour favour avec us, silver plate.'

‘What's a silver plate got to do with it?' demanded Granny.

‘It's foreign for please,' said Nanny.

‘I bet it isn't really,' said Granny. ‘You're just making it up as you goes along.'

The innkeeper, who worked on the fairly simple principle that anyone walking through the door wanted something to drink, drew three beers.

‘See?' said Nanny, triumphantly.

‘I don't like the way everyone's looking at us,' said Magrat, as Nanny babbled on to the perplexed man in her very own esperanto. ‘A man over there
grinned
at me.'

Granny Weatherwax sat down on a bench, endeavouring to position herself so that as small an amount of her body as possible was in contact with the wood, in case being foreign was something you could catch.

‘There,' said Nanny, bustling up with a tray, ‘nothing to it. I just cussed at him until he understood.'

‘It looks horrible,' said Granny.

‘Garlic sausage and garlic bread,' said Nanny. ‘My favourite.'

‘You ought to have got some fresh vegetables,' said Magrat the dietitian.

‘I did. There's some garlic,' said Nanny happily, cutting a generous slice of eye-watering sausage. ‘And I think I definitely saw something like pickled onions on one of the shelves.'

‘Yes? Then we're going to need at least two rooms for tonight,' said Granny sternly.

‘Three,' said Magrat, very quickly.

She risked another look around the room. The silent villagers were staring at them intently, with a look she could only describe to herself as a sort of hopeful sadness. Of course, anyone who spent much time in the company of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg got used to being stared at; they were the kind of people that filled every space from edge to edge. And probably people in these parts didn't often see strangers, what with the thick forests and all. And the sight of Nanny Ogg eating a sausage with extreme gusto would even outrank her pickled onion number as major entertainment anywhere.

Even so . . . the way people were staring . . .

Outside, deep in the trees, a wolf howled.

The assembled villagers shivered in unison, as though they had been practising. The landlord muttered something to them. They got up, reluctantly, and filed out of the door, trying to keep together. An old lady laid her hand on Magrat's shoulder for a moment, shook her head sadly, sighed, and then scuttled away. But Magrat was used to this, too. People often felt sorry for her when they saw her in Granny's company.

Eventually the landlord lurched across to them with a lighted torch, and motioned them to follow him.

‘How did you make him understand about the beds?' said Magrat.

‘I said, “Hey mister, jigajig toot sweet all same No. 3”,' said Nanny Ogg.

Granny Weatherwax tried this under her breath, and nodded.

‘Your lad Shane certainly gets around a bit, doesn't he,' she remarked.

‘He says it works every time,' said Nanny Ogg.

In fact there
were
only two rooms, up a long, winding and creaky stairway. And Magrat got one to herself. Even the landlord seemed to want it that way. He'd been very attentive.

She wished he hadn't been so keen to bar the shutters, though. Magrat liked to sleep with a window open. As it was, it was too dark and stuffy.

Anyway, she thought, I
am
the fairy godmother. The others are just accompanying me.

She peered hopelessly at herself in the room's tiny cracked mirror and then lay and listened to them on the far side of the paper-thin wall.

‘What're you turning the mirror to the wall for, Esme?'

‘I just don't like 'em, staring like that.'

‘They only stares if you're staring
at
'em, Esme.'

Silence, and then: ‘Eh, what's this round thing for, then?'

‘I reckon it's supposed to be a pillow, Esme.'

‘Hah!
I
don't call it a pillow. And there's no proper blankets, even. What'd you say this thing's called?'

‘I think it's called a duvit, Esme.'

‘
We
call them an eiderdown where I come from. Hah!'

There was a respite. Then:

‘Have you brushed your tooth?'

And another pause. Then:

‘Oo, you haven't half got cold feet, Esme.'

‘No, they ain't. They're lovely and snug.'

And another silence. Then:

‘Boots! Your boots! You've got your boots on!'

‘I should just think I 'ave got my boots on, Gytha Ogg.'

‘And your clothes! You haven't even undressed!'

‘You can't be too careful in foreign parts. There could be all sorts out there, a-creepin' around.'

Magrat snuggled under the – what was it? – duvit, and turned over. Granny Weatherwax appeared to need one hour's sleep a night, whereas Nanny Ogg would snore on a fence rail.

‘Gytha?
Gytha!
GYTHA!'

‘Wha'?'

‘Are you awake?'

‘'M now . . .'

‘I keep 'earing a noise!'

‘. . . so do I . . .'

Magrat dozed for a while.

‘Gytha? GYTHA!'

‘. . . wha' now? . . .'

‘I'm sure someone rattled our shutters!'

‘. . . not at our time of life . . . now g' back t' slee'. . .'

The air in the room was getting hotter and stuffier by the minute. Magrat got out of bed, unbolted the shutters and flung them back dramatically.

There was a grunt, and a distant thud of something hitting the ground.

The full moon streamed in. She felt a lot better for that, and got back into bed.

It seemed no time at all before the voice from next door woke her again.

‘Gytha Ogg, what are you
doing
?'

‘I'm 'aving a snack.'

‘Can't you sleep?'

‘Just can't seem to be able to get off, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘Can't imagine why.'

‘Here, that's garlic sausage you're eating! I'm actually sharing a bed with someone eating garlic sausage.'

‘Hey, that's mine! Give it back –'

Magrat was aware of booted footsteps in the pit of the night, and the sound of a shutter being swung back in the next room.

She thought she heard a faint ‘oof' and another muted thud.

‘I thought you
liked
garlic, Esme,' said Nanny Ogg's resentful voice.

‘Sausage is all right in its place, and its place ain't in bed. And don't you say a word. Now move over. You keep taking all the duvit.'

After a while the velvet silence was broken by Granny's deep and resonant snore. Shortly afterwards it was joined by the genteel snoring of Nanny, who had spent far more time sleeping in company than Granny and had evolved a more accommodating nasal orchestra. Granny's snore would have cut logs.

Magrat folded the horrible round hard pillow over her ears and burrowed under the bedclothes.

Somewhere on the chilly ground, a very large bat was trying to get airborne again. It had already been stunned twice, once by a carelessly opened shutter and once by a ballistic garlic sausage, and wasn't feeling very well at all. One more setback, it was thinking, and it's back off to the castle. Besides, it'd be sunrise soon.

Its red eyes glinted as it looked up at Magrat's open window. It tensed –

A paw landed on it.

The bat looked around.

Greebo had not had a very good night. He had investigated the whole place with regard to female cats, and found none. He had prowled among the middens, and drawn a blank. People in this town didn't throw the garbage away. They ate it.

He'd trotted into the woods and found some wolves and had sat and grinned at them until they got uncomfortable and went away.

Yes, it had been a very uneventful night. Until now.

The bat squirmed under his claw. It seemed to Greebo's small cat brain that it was trying to change its shape, and he wasn't having any of that from a mouse with wings on.

Especially now, when he had someone to play with.

Genua was a fairytale city. People smiled and were joyful the livelong day. Especially if they wanted to see
another
livelong day.

Lilith made certain of that. Of course, people had probably thought they were happy in the days before she'd seen to it that the Duc replaced the old Baron, but it was a random, untidy happiness, which was why it was so easy for her to move in.

But it wasn't a way of life. There was no pattern to it.

One day they'd thank her.

Of course, there were always a few difficult ones. Sometimes, people just didn't know how to act. You did your best for them, you ruled their city properly, you ensured that their lives were worthwhile and full of happiness every hour of the day and then, for no reason at all, they turned on you.

Guards lined the audience chamber. And there
was
an audience. Technically, of course, it was the ruler who gave the audience, but Lilith liked to see people watching. One pennyworth of example was worth a pound of punishment.

There wasn't a lot of crime in Genua these days. At least, not what would be considered crime elsewhere. Things like theft were easily dealt with and hardly required any kind of judicial process. Far more important, in Lilith's book, were crimes against narrative expectation. People didn't seem to know how they should behave.

Lilith held a mirror up to Life, and chopped all the bits off Life that didn't fit . . .

The Duc lounged bonelessly on his throne, one leg dangling over the armrest. He'd never got the hang of chairs.

‘And what has this one done?' he said, and yawned. Opening his mouth wide was something he
was
good at, at least.

A little old man cowered between two guards.

There's always someone willing to be a guard, even in places like Genua. Besides, you got a really smart uniform, with blue trousers and a red coat and a high black hat with a cockade in it.

‘But I . . . I
can't
whistle,' quavered the old man. ‘I . . . I didn't know it was compulsory . . .'

‘But you are a toymaker,' said the Duc. ‘Toymakers whistle and sing the whole day long.' He glanced at Lilith. She nodded.

‘I don't know any . . . s–songs,' said the toymaker. ‘I never got taught s–songs. Just how to make toys. I was ‘
prenticed
at making toys. Seven years before the little hammer, man and boy . . .'

‘It says here,' said the Duc, making a creditable impersonation of someone reading the charge sheet in front of him, ‘that you don't tell the children stories.'