Lords and Ladies (Discworld #14)

Lords and Ladies (Discworld #14) Page 27

“There's some gentry we don't want to see here,” said Granny. “I won't be happy until all this is over.”

Nanny Ogg craned to try and see over the head of a small emperor.

“Can't see Magrat around,” she said. “There's Verence talking to some other kings, but can't see our Magrat at all. Our Shawn said Millie Chillum said she was just a bag of nerves this morning.”

“All these high-born folks,” said Granny, looking around at the crowned heads. “I feel like a fish out of water.”

“Well, the way I see it, it's up to you to make your own water,” said Nanny, picking up a cold roast chicken leg from the buffet and stuffing it up a sleeve.

“Don't drink too much. We've got to keep alert, Gytha. Remember what I said. Don't let yourself get distracted-”

“That's never the delectable Mrs. Ogg, is it?”

Nanny turned.

There was no one behind her.

“Down here,” said the voice.

She looked down, into a wide grin.

“Oh, blast,” she said.

“It's me, Casanunda,” said Casanunda, who was dwarfed still further by an enormous[30] powdered wig. “You remember? We danced the night away in Genua?”

“No we didn't.”

“Well, we could have done.”

“Fancy you turning up here,” said Nanny, weakly. The thing about Casanunda, she recalled, was that the harder you slapped him down the faster he bounced back, often in an unexpected direction.

“Our stars are entwined,” said Casanunda. “We're fated for one another. I wants your body, Mrs. Ogg.”

“I'm still using it.”

And while she suspected, quite accurately, that this was an approach the world's second greatest lover used on anything that appeared to be even vaguely female, Nanny Ogg had to admit that she was flattered. She'd had many admirers in her younger days, but time had left her with a body that could only be called comfortable and a face like Mr. Grape the Happy Raisin. Long-banked fires gave off a little smoke.

Besides, she'd rather liked Casanunda. Most men were oblique in their approach, whereas his direct attack was refreshing.

“It'd never work,” she said. “We're basically incompatible. When I'm 5' 4” you'll still only be 3' 9“. Anyway, I'm old enough to be your mother.”

“You can't be. My mother's nearly 300, and she's got a better beard than you.”

And of course that was another point. By dwarf standards, Nanny Ogg was hardly more than a teenager.

“La, sir,” she said, giving him a playful tap that made his ears ring, “you do know how to turn a simple country girl's head and no mistake!”

Casanunda picked himself up and adjusted his wig happily

“I like a girl with spirit,” he said. “How about you and me having a little tete-a-tete when this is over?”

Nanny Ogg's face went blank. Her cosmopolitan grip of language had momentarily let her down.

“Excuse me a minute,” she said. She put her drink down on his head and pushed through the crowd until she found a likely looking duchess, and prodded her in the bustle regions.

“Hey, your grace, what's a tater tate?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A tater tate? Do you do it with your clothes on or what?”

“It means an intimate meeting, my good woman.”

“Is that all? Oh. Ta.”

Nanny Ogg elbowed her way back to the vibrating dwarf.

“You're on,” she said.

“I thought we could have a little private dinner, just you and me,” said Casanunda. “In one of the taverns?”

Never, in a long history of romance, had Nanny Ogg ever been taken out for an intimate dinner. Her courtships had been more noted for their quantity than their quality.

“OK,” was all she could think of to say.

“Dodge your chaperone and meet me at six o'clock?”

Nanny Ogg glanced at Granny Weatherwax, who was watching them disapprovingly from a distance.

“She's not my-” she began.

Then it dawned on her that Casanunda couldn't possibly have really thought that Granny Weatherwax was chaperoning her.

Compliments and flattery had also been very minor components in the machinery of Nanny Ogg's courtships.

“Yes, all right,” she said.

“And now I shall circulate, so that people don't talk and ruin your reputation,” said Casanunda, bowing and kissing Nanny Ogg's hand.

Her mouth dropped open. No one had ever kissed her hand before, either, and certainly no one had ever worried about her reputation, least of all Nanny Ogg.

As the world's second greatest lover bustled off to accost a countess. Granny Weatherwax - who had been watching from a discreet distance[31] - said, in an amiable voice: “You haven't got the morals of a cat, Gytha Ogg.”

“Now, Esme, you know that's not true.”

“All right. You have got the morals of a cat, then.”

“That's better.”

Nanny Ogg patted her mass of white curls and wondered if she had time to go home and put her corsets on.

“We must stay on our guard, Gytha.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Can't let other considerations turn our heads.”

“No, no.”

“You're not listening to a word I say, are you?”

“What?”

“You could at least find out why Magrat isn't down here.”

“All right.”

Nanny Ogg wandered off, dreamily.

Granny Weatherwax turned-

-there should have been violins. The murmur of the crowd should have faded away, and the crowd itself should have parted in a quite natural movement to leave an empty path between her and Ridcully

There should have been violins. There should have been something.

There shouldn't have been the Librarian accidentally knuckling her on the toe on his way to the buffet, but this, in fact, there was.

She hardly noticed.

“Esme?” said Ridcully

“Mustrum?” said Granny Weatherwax.

Nanny Ogg bustled up.

“Esme, I saw Millie Chillum and she said-”

Granny Weatherwax's vicious elbow jab winded her. Nanny took in the scene.

“Ah,” she said, “I'll just, I'll just. . . I'll just go away, then.”

The gazes locked again.

The Librarian knuckled past again with an entire display of fruit.

Granny Weatherwax paid him no heed.

The Bursar, who was currently on the median point of his cycle, tapped Ridcully on the shoulder.

“I say, Archchancellor, these quails' eggs are amazingly go-”

“DROP DEAD. Mr. Stibbons, fish out the frog pills and keep knives away from him, please.”

The gazes locked again.

“Well, well,” said Granny, after a year or so.

“This must be some enchanted evening,” said Ridcully.

“Yes. That's what I'm afraid of.”

“That really is you, isn't it?”

“It's really me,” said Granny

“You haven't changed a bit, Esme.”

“Nor have you, then. You're still a rotten liar, Mustrum Ridcully”

They walked toward one another. The Librarian shuttled between them with a tray of meringues. Behind them, Ponder Stibbons grovelled on the floor for a spilled bottle of dried frog pills.

“Well, well,” said Ridcully.

“Fancy that.”

“Small world.”

“Yes indeed.”

“You're you and I'm me. Amazing. And it's here and now.”

“Yes, but then was then.”

“I sent you a lot of letters,” said Ridcully

“Never got 'em.”

There was a glint in Ridcully's eye.

“That's odd. And there was me putting all those destination spells on them too,” he said. He gave her a critical up-and-down glance. “How much do you weigh, Esme? Not a spare ounce on you, I'll be bound.”

“What do you want to know for?”

“Indulge an old man.”

“Nine stones, then.”

“Hmm . . . should be about right . . . three miles hubward . . . you'll feel a slight lurch to the left, nothing to worry about. . .”

In a lightning movement, he grabbed her hand. He felt young and light-headed. The wizards back at the University would have been astonished.

“Let me take you away from all this.”

He snapped his fingers.

There has to be at least an approximate conservation of mass. It's a fundamental magical rule. If something is moved from A to B, something that was at B has got to find itself at A.

And then there's momentum. Slow as the disc spins, various points of its radii are moving at different speeds relative to the Hub, and a wizard projecting himself any distance toward the Rim had better be prepared to land jogging.

The three miles to Lancre Bridge merely involved a faint tug, which Ridcully had been ready for, and he landed up leaning against the parapet with Esme Weatherwax in his arms.

The customs troll who had until a fraction of a second previously been sitting there ended up lying full length on the floor of the Great Hall, coincidentally on top of the Bursar.

Granny Weatherwax looked over at the rushing water, and then at Ridcully.

“Take me back this instant,” she said. “You've got no right to do that.”

“Dear me, I seem to have run out of power. Can't understand it, very embarrassing, fingers gone all limp,” said Ridcully. “Of course, we could walk. It's a lovely evening. You always did get lovely evenings here.”

“It was all fifty or sixty years ago!” said Granny. “You can't suddenly turn up and say all those years haven't happened.”

“Oh, I know they've happened all right,” said Ridcully. “I'm the head wizard now. I've only got to give an order and a thousand wizards will. . . uh . . . disobey, come to think of it, or say 'What?', or start to argue. But they have to take notice.”

“I've been to that University a few times,” said Granny. “A bunch of fat old men in beards.”

“That's right! That's them!”

“A lot of 'em come from the Ramtops,” said Granny. “I knew a few boys from Lancre who became wizards.”

“Very magical area,” Ridcully agreed. “Something in the air.”

Below them, the cold black waters raced, always dancing to gravity, never flowing uphill.

“There was even a Weatherwax as Archchancellor, years ago,” said Ridcully.

“So I understand. Distant cousin. Never knew him,” said Granny.

They both stared down at the river for a moment. Occasionally a twig or a branch would whirl along in the current.

“Do you remember-”

“I have a . . . very good memory, thank you.”

"Do you ever wonder what life would have been like if

you'd said yes?" said Ridcully.

“No.”

“I suppose we'd have settled down, had children, grandchildren, that sort of thing . . .”

Granny shrugged. It was the sort of thing romantic idiots said. But there was something in the air tonight. . .

“What about the fire?” she said.

“What fire?”

"Swept through our house just after we were married.

Killed us both."