Carpe Jugulum (Discworld #23)

Carpe Jugulum (Discworld #23) Page 5

'Maybe they've got to her first?'

'You don't think so, do you?' said Nanny, now looking quite panicky. 'I can't think about a vampire getting his teeth into Esme.'

'Don't worry, dog doesn't eat dog.' It was Perdita who blurted it out, but it was Agnes who got the blow. It wasn't a ladylike slap of disapproval. Nanny Ogg had reared some strapping sons; the Ogg forearm was a power in its own right.

When Agnes looked up from the hearthrug Nanny was rubbing some life back into her hand. She gave Agnes a solemn look.

'We'll say no more about that, shall we?' she commanded. 'I ain't gen'rally given to physicality of that nature but it saves a lot of arguing. Now, we're goin' back to the castle. We're going to sort this out right now.'

Hodgesaargh shut the book and looked at the flame. It was true, then. There'd even been a picture of one just like it in the book, painstakingly drawn by another royal falconer two hundred years before. He wrote that he'd found the thing up on the high meadows, one spring. It'd burned for three years and then he'd lost it somewhere.

If you looked at it closely, you could even see the detail. It was not exactly a flame. It was more like a bright feather...

Well, Lancre was on one of the main migration routes, for birds of all sorts. It was only a matter of time.

So... the new hatchling was around. They needed time to grow, it said in the book. Odd that it should lay an egg here, because it said in the book that it always hatched in the burning deserts of Klatch.

He went and looked at the birds in the mews. They were still very alert.

Yes, it all made sense. It had flown in here, among the comfort of other birds, and laid its egg, just like it said it did in the book, and then it had burned itself up to hatch the new bird.

If Hodgesaargh had a fault, it lay in his rather utilitarian view of the bird world. There were birds that you hunted, and there were birds you hunted with. Oh, there were other sorts, tweeting away in the bushes, but they didn't really count. It occurred to him that if ever there was a bird you could hunt with, it'd be the phoenix.

Oh, yes. It'd be weak, and young, and it wouldn't have gone far.

Hmm... birds tended to think the same way, after all.

It would have helped if there was one picture in the book. In fact, there were several, all carefully drawn by ancient falconers who claimed it was a firebird they'd seen.

Apart from the fact that they all had wings and a beak, no two were remotely alike. One looked very much like a heron. Another looked like a goose. One, and he scratched his head about this, appeared to be a sparrow. Bit of a puzzle, he decided, and left it at that and selected a drawing that looked at least slightly foreign.

He glanced at the bird gloves hanging on their hooks. He was good at rearing young birds. He could get them eating out of his hand. Later on, of course, they just ate his hand.

Yes. Catch it young and train it to the wrist. It'd have to be a Champion hunting bird.

Hodgesaargh couldn't imagine a phoenix as quarry. For one thing, how could you cook it?

... and in the darkest corner of the mews, something hopped on to a perch...

Once again Agnes had to run to keep up as Nanny Ogg strode into the courtyard, elbows pumping furiously. The old lady marched up to a group of men standing around one of the barrels and grabbed two of them, spilling their drinks. Had it not been Nanny Ogg, this would have been a challenge equal to throwing down a glove or, in slightly less exalted circles, smashing a bottle on the edge of a bar.

But the men looked sheepish and one or two of the others in the circle even scuffled their feet and made an attempt to hide their pints behind their backs.

'Jason? Darren? You come along of me,' Nanny commanded. 'We're after vampires, right? Any sharp stakes around here?'

'No, Mum,' said Jason, Lancre's only blacksmith. Then he raised his hand. 'But ten minutes ago the cook come out and said, did anyone want all these nibbly things that someone had mucked up with garlic and I et 'em, Mum.'

Nanny sniffed and then took a step back, fanning her hand in front of her face. 'Yeah, that should do it all right,' she said. 'If I give you the signal, you're to burp hugely, understand?'

'I don't think it'll work, Nanny,' said Agnes, as boldly as she dared.

'I don't see why, it's nearly knocking me down.'

'I told you, you won't get close enough, even if it'll work at all. Perdita could feel it. It's like being drunk.'

'I'll be ready for 'em this time,' said Nanny. 'I've learned a thing or two from Esme.'

'Yes, but she's-' Agnes was going to say 'better at them than you', but changed it to 'not here...'

'That's as may be, but I'd rather face 'em now than explain to Esme that I didn't. Come on.'

Agnes followed the Oggs, but very uneasily. She wasn't sure how far she trusted Perdita.

A few guests had departed, but the castle had laid on a pretty good feast and Ramtop people at any social level were never ones to pass up a laden table.

Nanny glanced at the crowd and grabbed Shawn, who was passing with a tray.

'Where's the vampires?'

'What, Mum?'

'That Count... Magpie...'

'Magpyr,' said Agnes.

'Him,' said Nanny.

'He's not a... he's gone up to... the solar, Mum. They all have  -  What's that smell of garlic, Mum?'

'It's your brother. All right, let's keep going.'

The solar was right at the top of the keep. It was old, cold and draughty. Verence had put glass in the huge windows, at his queen's insistence, which just meant that now the huge room attracted the more cunning, insidious kind of draught. But it was the royal room  -  not as public as the great hall, but the place where the King received visitors when he was being formally informal.

The Nanny Ogg expeditionary force corkscrewed up the spiral staircase. She advanced across the good yet threadbare carpet to the group seated around the fire.

She took a deep breath.

'Ah, Mrs Ogg,' said Verence, desperately. 'Do join us.'

Agnes looked sideways at Nanny, and saw her face contort into a strange smile.

The Count was sitting in the big chair by the fire, with Vlad standing behind him. They both looked very handsome, she thought. Compared to them Verence, in his clothes that never seemed to fit right and permanently harassed expression, looked out of place.

'The Count was just explaining how Lancre will become a duchy of his lands in Uberwald,' said Verence. 'But we'll still be referred to as a kingdom, which I think is very reasonable of him, don't you agree?'

'Very handsome suggestion,' said Nanny.

'There will be taxes, of course,' said the Count. 'Not onerous. We don't want blood  -  figuratively speaking!' He beamed at the joke.

'Seems reasonable to me,' said Nanny.

'It is, isn't it?' said the Count. 'I knew it would work out so well. And I am so pleased, Verence, to see your essential modern attitude. People have quite the wrong idea about vampires, you see. Are we fiendish killers?' He beamed at them. 'Well, yes, of course we are. But only when necessary. Frankly, we could hardly hope to rule a country if we went around killing everyone all the time, could we? There'd be none left to rule, for one thing!' There was polite laughter, loudest of all from the Count.

It made perfect sense to Agnes. The Count was clearly a fair-minded man. Anyone who didn't think so deserved to die.

'And we are only human,' said the Countess. 'Well... in fact, not only human. But if you prick us do we not bleed? Which always seems such a waste.'

They've got you again, said a voice in her mind.

Vlad's head jerked up. Agnes felt him staring at her.

'We are, above all, up to date,' said the Count. 'And we do like what you've done to this castle, I must say.'

'Oh, those torches back home!' said the Countess, rolling her eyes. 'And some of the things in the dungeons, well, when I saw them I nearly died of shame. So... fifteen centuries ago. If one is a vampire then one is,' she gave a deprecating little laugh, 'a vampire. Coffins, yes, of course, but there's no point in skulking around as if you're ashamed of what you are, is there? We all have... needs.'

You're all standing around like rabbits in front of a fox! Perdita raged in the caverns of Agnes's brain.

'Oh!' said the Countess, clapping her hands together. 'I see you have a pianoforte!'

It stood under a shroud in a corner of the room where it had stood for four months now. Verence had ordered it because he'd heard they were very modern, but the only person in the kingdom who'd come close to mastering it was Nanny Ogg who would, as she put it, come up occasionally for a tinkle on the ivories.[11] Then it had been covered over on the orders of Magrat and the palace rumour was that Verence had got an earbashing for buying what was effectively a murdered elephant.

'Lacrimosa would so like to play for you,' the Countess commanded.

'Oh, Mother,' said Lacrimosa.

'I'm sure we should love it,' said Verence. Agnes wouldn't have noticed the sweat running down his face if Perdita hadn't pointed it out: He's trying to fight it, she said. Aren't you glad you've got me?

There was some bustling while a wad of sheet music was pulled out of the piano stool and the young lady sat down to play. She glared at Agnes before beginning. There was some sort of chemistry there, although it was the sort that results in the entire building being evacuated.

It's a racket, said the Perdita within, after the first few bars. Everyone's looking as though it's wonderful but it's a din!

Agnes concentrated. The music was beautiful but if she really paid attention, with Perdita nudging her, it wasn't really there at all. It sounded like someone playing scales, badly and angrily.

I can say that at any time, she thought. Any time I want, I can just wake up.

Everyone else applauded politely. Agnes tried to, but found that her left hand was suddenly on strike. Perdita was getting stronger in her left arm.

Vlad was beside her so quickly that she wasn't even aware that he'd moved.

'You are a... fascinating woman, Miss Nitt,' he said. 'Such lovely hair, may I say? But who is Perdita?'

'No one, really,' Agnes mumbled. She fought against the urge to bunch her left hand into a fist. Perdita was screaming at her again.

Vlad stroked a strand of her hair. It was, she knew, good hair. It wasn't simply big hair, it was enormous hair, as if she was trying to counterbalance her body. It was glossy, it never split, and was extremely well behaved except for a tendency to eat combs.

'Eat combs?' said Vlad, coiling the hair around his finger.

'Yes, it-'

He can see what you're thinking.

Vlad looked puzzled again, like someone trying to make out some faint noise.

'You... can resist, can't you?' he said. 'I was watching you when Lacci was playing the piano and losing. Do you have any vampire blood in you?'

'What? No!'

'It could be arranged, haha.' He grinned. It was the sort of grin that Agnes supposed was called infectious but, then, so was measles. It filled her immediate future. Something was pouring over her like a pink fluffy cloud saying: it's all right, everything is fine, this is exactly right...

'Look at Mrs Ogg there,' said Vlad. 'Grinning like a pumpkin, ain't she? And she is apparently one of the more powerful witches in the mountains. It's almost distressing, don't you think?'

Tell him you know he can read minds, Perdita commanded.

And again, the puzzled, quizzical look.

'You can-' Agnes began.

'No, not exactly. Just people,' said Vlad. 'One learns, one learns. One picks things up.' He flung himself down on a sofa, one leg over the arm, and stared thoughtfully at her.

'Things will be changing, Agnes Nitt,' he said. 'My father is right. Why lurk in dark castles? Why be ashamed? We're vampires. Or, rather, vampyres. Father's a bit keen on the new spelling. He says it indicates a clean break with a stupid and superstitious past. In any case, it's not our fault. We were born vampires.'

'I thought you became-'

'-vampires by being bitten? Dear me, no. Oh, we can turn people into vampires, it's an easy technique, but what would be the point? When you eat... now what is it you eat? Oh yes, chocolate... you don't want to turn it into another Agnes Nitt, do you? Less chocolate to go around.' He sighed. 'Oh dear, superstition, superstition everywhere we turn. Isn't it true that we've been here at least ten minutes and your neck is quite free of anything except a small amount of soap you didn't wash off?'

Agnes's hand flew to her throat.

'We notice these things,' said Vlad. 'And now we're here to notice them. Oh, Father is powerful in his way, and quite an advanced thinker, but I don't think even he is aware of the possibilities. I can't tell you how good it is to be out of that place, Miss Nitt. The werewolves... oh dear, the werewolves... Marvellous people, it goes without saying, and of course the Baron has a certain rough style, but really... give them a good deer hunt, a warm spot in front of the fire and a nice big bone and the rest of the world can go hang. We have done our best, we really have. No one has done more than Father to bring our part of the country into the Century of the Fruitbat '

'It's nearly over-' Agnes began.

'Perhaps that's why he's so keen,' said Vlad. 'The place is just full of... well, remnants. I mean... centaurs? Really! They've got no business surviving. They're out of place. And frankly all the lower races are just as bad. The trolls are stupid, the dwarfs are devious, the pixies are evil and the gnomes stick in your teeth. Time they were gone. Driven out. We have great hopes of Lancre.' He looked around disdainfully. 'After some redecoration.'

Agnes looked back at Nanny and her sons. They were listening quite contentedly to the worst music since Shawn Ogg's bagpipes had been dropped down the stairs.

'And... you're taking our country?' she said. 'Just like that?'

Vlad gave her another smile, stood up, and walked towards her. 'Oh, yes. Bloodlessly. Well... metaphorically. You really are quite remarkable, Miss Nitt. The Uberwald girls are so sheep-like. But you. .. you're concealing something from me. Everything I feel tells me you're quite under my power  -  and yet you're not.' He chuckled. 'This is delightful...'

Agnes felt her mind unravelling. The pink fog was blowing through her head...

... and looming out of it, deadly and mostly concealed, was the iceberg of Perdita.

As Agnes withdrew into the pinkness she felt the tingle spread down her arms and legs. It was not pleasant. It was like sensing someone standing right behind you and then feeling them take one step forward.

Agnes would have pushed him away. That is, Agnes would have dithered and tried to talk her way out of things, but if push had come to shove then she'd have pushed hard. But Perdita struck, and when her hand was halfway around she turned it palm out and curled her fingers to bring her nails into play...

He caught her wrist, his hand moving in a blur.

'Well done,' he said, laughing.

His other hand shot out and caught her other arm as it swung.

'I like a woman with spirit!'

However, he had run out of hands, and Perdita still had a knee in reserve. Vlad's eyes crossed and he made that small sound best recorded as 'ghni...'

'Magnificent!' he croaked as he folded up.

Perdita pulled herself away and ran over to Nanny Ogg, grabbing the woman's arm.

'Nanny, we are leaving!'

'Are we, dear?' said Nanny calmly, not making a move.

'And Jason and Darren too!'

Perdita didn't read as much as Agnes. She thought books were bor-ing. But now she really needed to know: what did you use against vampires?

Holy symbols! Agnes prompted from within.

Perdita looked around desperately. Nothing in the room looked particularly holy. Religion, apart from its use as a sort of cosmic registrar, had never caught on in Lancre.

'Daylight is always good, my dear,' said the Countess, who must have caught the edge of her thought. 'Your uncle always had big windows and easily twitched aside curtains, didn't he, Count?'

'Yes indeed,' said the Count.

'And when it came to running water, he always kept the moat flowing perfectly, didn't he?'

'Fed from a mountain stream, I think,' said the Count.

'And, for a vampire, he always seemed to have so many ornamental items around the castle that could be bent or broken into the shape of some religious symbol, as I recall.'

'He certainly did. A vampire of the old school.'

'Yes.' The Countess gave her husband a smile. 'The stupid school.' She turned to Perdita and looked her up and down. 'So I think you will find we are here to stay, my dear. Although you do seem to have made an impression on my son. Come here, girl. Let me have a good look at you.'

Even cushioned inside her own head Agnes felt the weight of the vampire's will hit Perdita like an iron bar, pushing her down. Like the other end of a seesaw, Agnes rose.

'Where's Magrat? What have you done with her?' she said.

'Putting the baby to bed, I believe,' said the Countess, raising her eyebrows. 'A lovely child.'

'Granny Weatherwax is going to hear about this, and you'll wish you'd never been born... or un-born or reborn or whatever you are!'

'We look forward to meeting her,' said the Count calmly. 'But here we are, and I don't seem to see this famous lady with us. Perhaps you should go and fetch her? You could take your friends. And when you see her, Miss Nitt, you can tell her that there is no reason why witches and vampires should fight.'

Nanny Ogg stirred. Jason shifted in his seat. Agnes pulled them upright and towards the stairs.

'We'll be back!' she shouted.

The Count nodded.

'Good,' he said. 'We are famous for our hospitality.'

It was still dark when Hodgesaargh set out. If you were hunting a phoenix, he reasoned, the dark was probably the best time. Light showed up better in the darkness.

He'd packed a portable wire cage after considering the charred bars of the window, and he'd also spent some time on the glove.

It was basically a puppet, made of yellow cloth with some purple and blue rags tacked on. It was not, he conceded, very much like the drawing of the phoenix, but in his experience birds weren't choosy observers.

Newly hatched birds were prepared to accept practically anything as their parent. Anyone who'd hatched eggs under a broody hen knew that ducklings could be made to think they were chicks, and poor William the buzzard was a case in point.

The fact that a young phoenix never saw its parent and therefore didn't know what it was supposed to look like might be a drawback in getting its trust, but this was unknown territory and Hodgesaargh was prepared to try anything. Like bait, for example. He'd packed meat and grain, although the drawing certainly suggested a hawklike bird, but in case it needed to eat inflammable materials as well he also put in a bag of mothballs and a pint of fish oil. Nets were out of the question, and bird lime was not to be thought of. Hodgesaargh had his pride. Anyway, they probably wouldn't work.

Since anything might be worth trying, he'd also adapted a duck lure, trying to achieve a sound described by alongdead falconer as 'like unto the cry of a buzzard yet of a lower pitch'. He wasn't too happy about the result but, on the other hand, maybe a young phoenix didn't know what a phoenix was meant to sound like, either. It might work, and if he didn't try it he'd always be wondering.

He set out.

Soon a cry like a duck in a power dive was heard among the damp, dark hills.

The pre-dawn light was grey on the horizon and a shower of sleet had made the leaves sparkle when Granny Weatherwax left her cottage. There had been so much to do.

What she'd chosen to take with her was slung in a sack tied across her back with string. She'd left the broomstick in the corner by the fire.

She wedged the door open with a stone and then, without once looking back, strode off through the woods.

Down in the villages, the cocks crowed in response to a sunrise hidden somewhere beyond the clouds.

An hour later, a broomstick settled gently on the lawn. Nanny Ogg alighted and hurried to the back door.

Her foot kicked something holding it open. She glared at the stone as if it was something dangerous, and then edged round it and into the gloom of the cottage.

She came out a few minutes later, looking worried.

Her next move was towards the water butt. She broke the film of ice with her hand and pulled out a piece, looked at it for a moment and then tossed it away.

People often got the wrong idea about Nanny Ogg, and she took care to see that they did. One thing they often got wrong was the idea that she never thought further than the bottom of the glass.

Up in a nearby tree a magpie chattered at her. She threw a stone at it.

Agnes arrived half an hour later. She preferred to go on foot whenever possible. She suspected that she overhung too much.

Nanny Ogg was sitting on a chair just inside the door, smoking her pipe. She took it out of her mouth and nodded.

'She's gorn,' she said.

'Gone? Just when we need her?' said Agnes. 'What do you mean?'

'She ain't here,' Nanny expanded.

'Perhaps she's just out?' said Agnes.

'Gorn,' said Nanny. 'These past two hours, if I'm any judge.'

'How do you know that?'

Once  -  probably even yesterday  -  Nanny would have alluded vaguely to magical powers. It was a measure of her concern that, today, she got right to the jelly.

'First thing she does in the mornings, rain or shine, is wash her face in the water butt,' she said. 'Someone broke the ice two hours ago. You can see where it's frozed over again.'

'Oh, is that all?' said Agnes. 'Well, perhaps she's got business-'

'You come and see,' said Nanny, standing up.

The kitchen was spotless. Every flat surface had been scrubbed. The fireplace had been swept-and a new fire laid.

Most of the cottage's smaller contents had been laid out on the table. There were three cups, three plates, three knives, a cleaver, three forks, three spoons, two ladles, a pair of scissors and three candlesticks. A wooden box was packed with needles and thread and pins...

If it was possible for anything to be polished, it had been. Someone had even managed to buff up a shine on the old pewter candlesticks.

Agnes felt the little knot of tension grow inside her. Witches didn't own much. The cottage owned things. They were not yours to take away.

This looked like an inventory.

Behind her, Nanny Ogg was opening and shutting drawers in the ancient dresser.

'She's left it all neat,' Nanny said. 'She's even chipped all the rust off the kettle. The larder's all bare except for some hobnailed cheese and suicide biscuits. It's the same in the bedroom. Her "I ATE'NT DEAD" card is hanging behind the door. And the guzunda's so clean you could eat your tea out of it, if the fancy took you that way. And she's taken the box out of the dresser.'

'What box?'

'Oh, she keeps stuff in it,' said Nanny. 'Memororabililia.'

'Mem-?'

'You know... keepsakes and whatnot. Stuff that's hers-'

'What's this?' said Agnes, holding up a green glass ball.

'Oh, Magrat passed that on to her,' said Nanny, lifting up a corner of the rug and peering under it. 'It's a float our Wayne brought back from the seaside once. It's a buoy for the fishing nets.'

'I didn't know buoys had glass balls,' said Agnes.

She groaned inwardly, and felt the blush unfold. But Nanny hadn't noticed. It was then she realized how really serious this was. Nanny would normally leap on such a gift like a cat on a feather. Nanny could find an innuendo in 'Good morning.' She could certainly find one in 'innuendo'. And 'buoys with glass balls' should have lasted her all week. She'd be accosting total strangers and saying, 'You'll never guess what Agnes Nitt said...'

She ventured 'I said-'

'Dunno much about fishing, really,' said Nanny. She straightened up, biting her thumbnail thoughtfully. 'Something's wrong with all this,' she said. 'The box... she wasn't going to leave anything behind...'

'Granny wouldn't go, would she?' said Agnes nervously. 'I mean, not actually leave. She's always here.'

'Like I told you last night, she's been herself lately,' said Nanny vaguely. She sat down in the rocking chair.

'You mean she's not been herself, don't you?' said Agnes.

'I knows exactly what I means, girl. When she's herself she snaps at people and sulks and makes herself depressed. Ain't you ever heard of taking people out of themselves? Now shut up, 'cos I'm thinkin'.'

Agnes looked down at the green ball in her hands. A glass fishing float, five hundred miles from the sea. An ornament, like a shell. Not a crystal ball. You could use it like a crystal ball but it wasn't a crystal ball....nd she knew why that was important.

Granny was a very traditional witch. Witches hadn't always been popular. There might even be times  -  there had been times, long ago  -  when it was a good idea not to advertise what you were, and that was why all these things on the table didn't betray their owner at all. There was no need for that any more, there hadn't been in Lancre for hundreds of years, but some habits get passed down in the blood.

In fact things now worked the other way. Being a witch was an honourable trade in the mountains, but only the young ones invested in real crystal balls and coloured knives and dribbly candles. The old ones... they stuck with simple kitchen cutlery, fishing floats, bits of wood, whose very ordinariness subtly advertised their status. Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple-corer.

A sound she hadn't been hearing stopped abruptly, and the silence echoed.

Nanny glanced up.

'Clock's stopped,' she said.

'It's not even telling the right time,' said Agnes, turning to look at it.

'Oh, she just kept it for the tick,' said Nanny.

Agnes put down the glass ball.

'I'm going to look around some more,' she said.

She'd learned to look around when she visited someone's home, because in one way it was a piece of clothing and had grown to fit their shape. It might show not just what they'd been doing, but what they'd been thinking. You might be visiting someone who expected you to know everything about everything, and in those circumstances you took every advantage you could get.

Someone had told her that a witch's cottage was her second face. Come to think of it, it had been Granny.

It should be easy to read this place. Granny's thoughts had the strength of hammer blows and they'd pounded her personality into the walls. If her cottage had been any more organic it would have had a pulse.

Agnes wandered through to the dank little scullery. The copper washpot had been scoured. A fork and a couple of shining spoons lay beside it, along with the washboard and scrubbing brush. The slop bucket gleamed, although the fragments of a broken cup in the bottom said that the recent intensive housework hadn't been without its casualties.

She pushed open the door into the old goat shed. Granny was not keeping goats at the moment, but her home-made beekeeping equipment was neatly laid out on a bench. She'd never needed much. If you needed smoke and a veil to deal with your bees, what was the point of being a witch?

Bees...

A moment later she was out in the garden, her ear pressed against a beehive.

There were no bees flying this early in the day, but the sound inside was a roar.

'They'll know,' said a voice behind her. Agnes stood up so quickly she bumped her head on the hive roof.

'But they won't say,' Nanny added. 'She'd have told 'em. Well done for thinkin' about 'em, though.'

Something chattered at them from a nearby branch. It was a magpie.

'Good morning, Mister Magpie,' said Agnes automatically.

'Bugger off, you bastard,' said Nanny, and reached down for a stick to throw. The bird swooped off to the other side of the clearing.

'That's bad luck,' said Agnes.

'It will be if I get a chance to aim,' said Nanny. 'Can't stand those maggoty-pies.'

' "One for sorrow," said Agnes, watching the bird hop along a branch.

'I always take the view there's prob'ly going to be another one along in a minute,' said Nanny, dropping a stick.

' "Two for joy"?' said Agnes.

'It's "two for mirth".'

'Same thing, I suppose.'

'Dunno about that,' said Nanny. 'I was joyful when our Jason was born, but I can't say I was laughin' at the time. Come on, let's have another look.'

Two more magpies landed on the cottage's antique thatch.

'That's "three for a girl-"' said Agnes nervously.

' "Three for a funeral" is what I learned,' said Nanny. 'But there's lots of magpie rhymes. Look, you take her broomstick and have a look over towards the mountains, and I'll-'

'Wait,' said Agnes.

Perdita was screaming at her to pay attention. She listened.

Threes...

Three spoons. Three knives. Three cups.

The broken cup thrown away.

She stood still, afraid that if she moved or breathed something awful would happen.

The clock had stopped...

'Nanny?'

Nanny Ogg was wise enough to recognize that something was happening and didn't waste time on daft questions.

'Yes?' she said.

'Go in and tell me what time the clock stopped at, will you?'

Nanny nodded and trotted off.

The tension in Agnes's head stretched out thin and made a noise like a plucked string. She was amazed that the whine from it couldn't be heard all round the garden. If she moved, if she tried to force things, it'd snap.

Nanny returned.

'Three o'clock?' said Agnes, before she opened her mouth.

'Just after.'

'How much after?'

'Two or three minutes...'

'Two or three?'

'Three, then.'

The three magpies landed together on another tree and chased one another through the branches, chattering loudly.

'Three minutes after three,' said Agnes, and felt the tension ease and the words form. 'Threes, Nanny. She was thinking in threes. There was another candlestick out in the goat shed, and some cutlery too. But she only put out threes.'

'Some things were in ones and twos,' said Nanny, but her voice was edged with doubt.

'Then she'd only got one or two of them,' said Agnes. 'There were more spoons and things out in the scullery that she'd missed. I mean that for some reason she wasn't putting out more than three.'

'I know for a fact she's got four cups,' said Nanny.

'Three,' said Agnes. 'She must've broken one. The bits are in the slop bucket.'

Nanny Ogg stared at her. 'She's not clumsy, as a rule,' she mumbled. She looked to Agnes as though she was trying to avoid some huge and horrible thought.

A gust shook the trees. A few drops of rain spattered across the garden.

'Let's get inside,' Agnes suggested.

Nanny shook her head. 'It's chillier in there than out here,' she said. Something skimmed across the leaves and landed on the lawn. It was a fourth magpie. ' "Four for a birth,"' she added, apparently to herself. 'That'd be it, sure enough. I hoped she wouldn't realize, but you can't get anything past Esme. I'll tan young Shawn's hide for him when I get home. He swore he'd delivered that invite!'

'Perhaps she took it away with her?'

'No! If she'd got it she'd have been there last night, you can bet on it!' snapped Nanny.

'What wouldn't she realize?' said Agnes.

'Magrat's daughter!'

'What? Well, I should think she would realize! You can't hide a baby! Everyone in the kingdom knows about it.'

'I mean Magrat's got a daughter! She's a mother!' said Nanny.