Wyrd Sisters (Discworld #6)

After several piercing glares at the three-man orchestra to see if she could work out which instrument the theatre was, the old witch had finally paid attention to the stage, and it was beginning to become apparent to Magrat that there were certain fundamental aspects of the theatre that Granny had not yet grasped.

She was currently bouncing up and down on her stool with rage.

'He's killed him,' she hissed. 'Why isn't anyone doing anything about it? He's killed him! And right up there in front of everyone!'

Magrat held on desperately to her colleague's arm as she struggled to get to her feet.

'It's all right,' she whispered. 'He's not dead!'

'Are you calling me a liar, my girl?' snapped Granny. 'I saw it all!'

'Look, Granny, it's not really real, d'you see?'

Granny Weatherwax subsided a little, but still grumbled under her breath. She was beginning to feel that things were trying to make a fool of her.

Up on the stage a man in a sheet was giving a spirited monologue. Granny listened intently for some minutes, and then nudged Magrat in the ribs.

'What's he on about now?' she demanded.

'He's saying how sorry he was that the other man's dead,' said Magrat, and in an attempt to change the subject added hurriedly, 'There's a lot of crowns, isn't there?'

Granny was not to be distracted. 'What'd he go and kill him for, then?' she said.

'Well, it's a bit complicated—' said Magrat, weakly.

'It's shameful!' snapped Granny. 'And the poor dead thing still lying there!'

Magrat gave an imploring look to Nanny Ogg, who was masticating an apple and studying the stage with the glare of a research scientist.

'I reckon,' she said slowly, 'I reckon it's all just pretendin'. Look, he's still breathing.'

The rest of the audience, who by now had already decided that this commentary was all part of the play, stared as one man at the corpse. It blushed.

'And look at his boots, too,' said Nanny critically. 'A real king'd be ashamed of boots like that.'

The corpse tried to shuffle its feet behind a cardboard bush.

Granny, feeling in some obscure way that they had scored a minor triumph over the purveyors of untruth and artifice, helped herself to an apple from the bag and began to take a fresh interest. Magrat's nerves started to unknot, and she began to settle down to enjoy the play. But not, as it turned out, for very long. Her willing suspension of disbelief was interrupted by a voice saying:

'What's this bit?'

Magrat sighed. 'Well,' she hazarded, 'he thinks that he is the prince, but he's really the other king's daughter, dressed up as a man.'

Granny subjected the actor to a long analytical stare.

'He is a man,' she said. 'In a straw wig. Making his voice squeaky.'

Magrat shuddered. She knew a little about the conventions of the theatre. She had been dreading this bit. Granny Weatherwax had Views.

'Yes, but,' she said wretchedly, 'it's the Theatre, see. All the women are played by men.'

'Why?'

'They don't allow no women on the stage,' said Magrat in a small voice. She shut her eyes.

In fact, there was no outburst from the seat on her left. She risked a quick glance.

Granny was quietly chewing the same bit of apple over and over again, her eyes never leaving the action.

'Don't make a fuss, Esme,' said Nanny, who also knew about Granny's Views. 'This is a good bit. I reckon I'm getting the hang of it.'

Someone tapped Granny on the shoulder and a voice said, 'Madam, will you kindly remove your hat?'

Granny turned around very slowly on her stool, as though propelled by hidden motors, and subjected the interrupter to a hundred kilowatt diamond-blue stare. The man wilted under it and sagged back on to his stool, her face following him all the way down.

'No,' she said.

He considered the options. 'All right,' he said.

Granny turned back and nodded to the actors, who had paused to watch her.

'I don't know what you're staring at,' she growled. 'Get on with it.'

Nanny Ogg passed her another bag.

'Have a humbug,' she said.

Silence again filled the makeshift theatre except for the hesitant voices of the actors, who kept glancing at the bristling figure of Granny Weatherwax, and the sucking sounds of a couple of boiled humbugs being relentlessly churned from cheek to cheek.

Then Granny said, in a piercing voice that made one actor drop his wooden sword, 'There's a man over on the side there whispering to them!'

'He's a prompter,' said Magrat. 'He tells them what to say.'

'Don't they know?'

'I think they're forgetting,' said Magrat sourly. 'For some reason.'

Granny nudged Nanny Ogg.

'What's going on now?' she said. 'Why're all them kings and people up there?'

'It's a banquet, see,' said Nanny Ogg authoritatively. 'Because of the dead king, him in the boots, as was, only now if you look, you'll see he's pretending to be a soldier, and everyone's making speeches about how good he was and wondering who killed him.'

'Are they?' said Granny, grimly. She cast her eyes along the cast, looking for the murderer.

She was making up her mind.

Then she stood up.

Her black shawl billowed around her like the wings of an avenging angel, come to rid the world of all that was foolishness and pretence and artifice and sham. She seemed somehow a lot bigger than normal. She pointed an angry finger at the guilty party.

'He done it!' she shouted triumphantly. 'We all seed 'im! He done it with a dagger!'

The audience filed out, contented. It had been a good play on the whole, they decided, although not very easy to follow. But it had been a jolly good laugh when all the kings had run off, and the woman in black had jumped up and did all the shouting. That alone had been well worth the ha'penny admission.

The three witches sat alone on the edge of the stage.

'I wonder how they get all them kings and lords to come here and do this?' said Granny, totally unabashed. 'I'd have thought they'd been too busy. Ruling and similar.'

'No,' said Magrat, wearily. 'I still don't think you quite understand.'

'Well, I'm going to get to the bottom of it,' snapped Granny. She got back on to the stage and pulled aside the sacking curtains.

'You!' she shouted. 'You're dead!'

The luckless former corpse, who was eating a ham sandwich to calm his nerves, fell backwards off his stool.

Granny kicked a bush. Her boot went right through it.

'See?' she said to the world in general in a strangely satisfied voice. 'Nothing's real! It's all just paint, and sticks and paper at the back.'

'May I assist you, good ladies?'

It was a rich and wonderful voice, with every diphthong gliding beautifully into place. It was a golden brown voice. If the Creator of the multiverse had a voice, it was a voice such as this. If it had a drawback, it was that it wasn't a voice you could use, for example, for ordering coal. Coal ordered by this voice would become diamonds.

It apparently belonged to a large fat man who had been badly savaged by a moustache. Pink veins made a map of quite a large city on his cheeks; his nose could have hidden successfully in a bowl of strawberries. He wore a ragged jerkin and holey tights with an aplomb that nearly convinced you that his velvet-and-vermine robes were in the wash just at the moment. In one hand he held a towel, with which he had clearly been removing the make-up that still greased his features.

'I know you,' said Granny. 'You done the murder.' She looked sideways at Magrat, and admitted, grudgingly, 'Leastways, it looked like it.'

'So glad. It is always a pleasure to meet a true connoisseur. Olwyn Vitoller, at your service. Manager of this band of vagabonds,' said the man and, removing his moth-eaten hat, he treated her to a low bow. It was less an obeisance than an exercise in advanced topology.

The hat swerved and jerked through a series of complex arcs, ending up at the end of an arm which was now pointing in the direction of the sky. One of his legs, meanwhile, had wandered off behind him. The rest of his body sagged politely until his head was level with Granny's knees.

'Yes, well,' said Granny. She felt that her clothes had grown a bit larger and much hotter.

'I thought you was very good, too,' said Nanny Ogg. 'The way you shouted all them words so graciously. I could tell you was a king.'

'I hope we didn't upset things,' said Magrat.

'My dear lady,' said Vitoller. 'Could I begin to tell you how gratifying it is for a mere mummer to learn that his audience has seen behind the mere shell of greasepaint to the spirit beneath?'

'I expect you could,' said Granny. 'I expect you could say anything, Mr Vitoller.'

He replaced his hat and their eyes met in the long and calculating stare of one professional weighing up another. Vitoller broke first, and tried to pretend he hadn't been competing.

'And now,' he said, 'to what do I owe this visit from three such charming ladies?'

In fact he'd won. Granny's mouth fell open. She would not have described herself as anything much above 'handsome, considering'. Nanny, on the other hand, was as gummy as a baby and had a face like a small dried raisin. The best you could say for Magrat was that she was decently plain and well-scrubbed and as flat-chested as an ironing board with a couple of peas on it, even if her head was too well stuffed with fancies. Granny could feel something, some sort of magic at work. But not the kind she was used to.

It was Vitoller's voice. By the mere process of articulation it transformed everything it talked about.

Look at the two of them, she told herself, primping away like a couple of ninnies. Granny stopped her hand in the process of patting her own iron-hard bun, and cleared her throat meaningfully.

'We'd like to talk to you, Mr Vitoller.' She indicated the actors, who were dismantling the set and staying well out of her way, and added in a conspiratorial whisper, 'Somewhere private.'

'Dear lady, but of a certain,' he said. 'Currently I have lodgings in yonder esteemed watering hole.'

The witches looked around. Eventually Magrat risked, 'You mean in the pub?'

It was cold and draughty in the Great Hall of Lancre Castle, and the new chamberlain's bladder wasn't getting any younger. He stood and squirmed under the gaze of Lady Felmet.

'Oh, yes,' he said. 'We've got them all right. Lots.'

'And people don't do anything about them?' said the duchess.

The chamberlain blinked. 'I'm sorry?' he said.

'People tolerate them?'

'Oh, indeed,' said the chamberlain happily. 'It's considered good luck to have a witch living in your village. My word, yes.'

'Why?'

The chamberlain hesitated. The last time he had resorted to a witch it had been because certain rectal problems had turned the privy into a daily torture chamber, and the jar of ointment she had prepared had turned the world into a nicer place.

'They smooth out life's little humps and bumps,' he said.

'Where I come from, we don't allow witches,' said the duchess sternly. 'And we don't propose to allow them here. You will furnish us with their addresses.'

'Addresses, ladyship?'

'Where they live. I trust your tax gatherers know where to find them?'

'Ah,' said the chamberlain, miserably.

The duke leaned forward on his throne.

'I trust,' he said, 'that they do pay taxes?'

'Not, exactly pay taxes, my lord,' said the chamberlain.

There was silence. Finally the duke prompted, 'Go on, man.'

'Well, it's more that they don't pay, you see. We never felt, that is, the old king didn't think . . . Well, they just don't.'

The duke laid a hand on his wife's arm.

'I see,' he said coldly. 'Very well. You may go.'

The chamberlain gave him a brief nod of relief and scuttled crabwise from the hall.