Feet of Clay (Discworld #19)

Feet of Clay (Discworld #19) Page 11

'You know it, sir?'

'Should do. I was born in that street,' said Vimes. 'It's down below the Shades. Easy... Easy... Yes ,...ow I remember. There was a Mrs Easy down the road. Skinny woman. Did a lot of sewing. Big family. Well, we were all big families, it was the only way to keep warm...'

He frowned at the paper. It wasn't as if it were any particular lead. Maidservants were always going off to see their mothers, every time there was the least little family upset. What was it his granny had used to say? 'Yer son's yer son till he takes a wife, but yer daughter's yer daughter all yer life.' Sending a Watchman around would almost certainly be a waste of everyone's time...

'Well, well... Cockbill Street,' he said. He stared at the paper again. You might as well rename the place Memory Lane. No, you couldn't waste Watch resources on a wild-goose chase like that. But he might look in. On his way past. Some time today.

'Er ... Littlebottom?'

'Sir?'

'On your... your lips. Red. Er. On your lips

'Lipstick, sir.'

'Oh ... er. Lipstick? Fine. Lipstick.'

'Constable Angua gave it to me, sir.'

That was kind of her,' said Vimes. 'I expect.'

It was called the Rats Chamber. In theory this was because of the decoration; some former resident of the palace had thought that a fresco of dancing rats would be a real decorative coup. There was a pattern of rats woven in the carpet. On the ceiling rats danced in a circle, their tails intertwining at the centre. After half an hour in that room, most people wanted a wash.

Soon, then, there would be a big rush on the hot water. The room was filling up fast.

By common consent the chair was taken and amply filled by Mrs Rosemary Palm, head of the Guild of Seamstresses[15], as one of the most senior guild leaders.

'Quiet, please! Gentlemen!'

The noise level subsided a little.

'Dr Downey?' she said.

The head of the Assassins' Guild nodded. 'My friends, I think we are all aware of the situation - ' he began.

'Yeah, so's your accountant!' said a voice in the crowd. There was a ripple of nervous laughter but it didn't last long, because you don't laugh too loud at someone who knows exactly how much you're worth dead.

Dr Downey smiled. 'I can assure you once again, gentlemen - and ladies - that I am aware of no engagement regarding Lord Vetinari. In any case, I cannot imagine that an Assassin would use poison in this case. His lordship spent some time at the Assassins' school. He knows the uses of caution. No doubt he will recover.'

'And if he doesn't?' said Mrs Palm.

'No one lives forever,' said Dr Downey, in the calm voice of a man who personally knew this to be true. Then, no doubt, we'll get a new ruler.'

The room went very silent.

The word 'Who?' hovered silently above every head.

'Thing is ... the thing is...' said Gerhardt Sock, head of the Butchers' Guild, 'it's been... you've got to admit it... it's been... well, think about some of the others ...

The words 'Lord Snapcase, now ... at least this one isn't actually insane' flickered in the group consciousness.

'I have to admit,' said Mrs Palm, 'that under Vetinari it has certainly been safer to walk the streets - '

'You should know, madam,' said Mr Sock. Mrs Palm gave him an icy look. There were a few sniggers.

'I meant that a modest payment to the Thieves' Guild is all that is required for perfect safety,' she finished.

'And, indeed, a man may visit a house of ill - '

'Negotiable hospitality,' said Mrs Palm quickly.

'Indeed, and be quite confident of not waking up stripped stark naked and beaten black and blue,' said Sock.

'Unless his tastes run that way,' said Mrs Palm. 'We aim to give satisfaction. Very accurately, if required.'

'Life has certainly been more reliable under Vetinari,' said Mr Potts of the Bakers' Guild.

'He does have all street-theatre players and mime artists thrown into the scorpion pit,' said Mr Boggis of the Thieves' Guild.

'True. But let's not forget that he has his bad points too. The man is capricious.'

'You think so? Compared to the ones we had before he's as reliable as a rock.'

'Snapcase was reliable,' said Mr Sock gloomily. 'Remember when he made his horse a city councillor?'

'You've got to admit it wasn't a bad councillor. Compared to some of the others.'

'As I recall, the others at that time were a vase of flowers, a heap of sand and three people who had been beheaded.'

'Remember all those fights? All the little gangs of thieves fighting all the time? It got so that there was hardly any energy left to actually steal things,' said Mr Boggis.

'Things are indeed more... reliable now.'

Silence descended again. That was it, wasn't it? Things were reliable now. Whatever else you said about old Vetinari, he made sure today was always followed by tomorrow. If you were murdered in your bed, at least it would be by arrangement.

'Things were more exciting under Lord Snapcase,' someone ventured.

'Yes, right up until the point when your head fell off.'

'The trouble is,' said Mr Boggis, 'that the job makes people mad. You take some chap who's no worse than any of us and after a few months he's talking to moss and having people flayed alive.'

'Vetinari isn't mad.'

'Depends how you look at it. No one can be as sane as he is without being mad.'

'I am only a weak woman,' said Mrs Palm, to the personal disbelief of several present, 'but it does seem to me that there's an opportunity here. Either there's a long struggle to sort out a successor, or we sort it out now. Yes?'

The guild leaders tried to look at one another while simultaneously avoiding everyone else's glances. Who'd be Patrician now? Once there'd have been a huge multi-sided power struggle, but now...

You got the power, but you got the problems, too. Things had changed. These days, you had to negotiate and juggle with all the conflicting interests. No one sane had tried to kill Vetinari for years, because the world with him in it was just preferable to one without him.

Besides... Vetinari had tamed Ankh-Morpork. He'd tamed it like a dog. He'd taken a minor scavenger among scavengers and lengthened its teeth and strengthened its jaws and built up its muscles and studded its collar and fed it lean steak and then he'd aimed it at the throat of the world.

He'd taken all the gangs and squabbling groups and made them see that a small slice of the cake on a regular basis was better by far than a bigger slice with a dagger in it. He'd made them see that it was better to take a small slice but enlarge the cake.

Ankh-Morpork, alone of all the cities of the plains, had opened its gates, to dwarfs and trolls (alloys are stronger, Vetinari had said). It had worked. They made things. Often they made trouble, but mostly they made wealth. As a result, although Ankh-Morpork still had many enemies, those enemies had to finance their armies with borrowed money. Most of it was borrowed from Ankh-Morpork, at punitive interest. There hadn't been any really big wars for years. Ankh-Morpork had made them unprofitable.

Thousands of years ago the old empire had enforced the Pax Morporkia, which had said to the world: 'Do not fight, or we will kill you.' The Pax had arisen again, but this time it said: 'If you fight, we'll call in your mortgages. And incidentally, that's my pike you're pointing at me. I paid for that shield you're holding. And take my helmet off when you speak to me, you horrible little debtor.'

And now the whole machine, which whirred away so quietly that people had forgotten it was a machine at all and thought that it was just the way the world worked, had given a lurch.

The guild leaders examined their thoughts and decided that what they did not want was power. What they wanted was that tomorrow should be pretty much like today.

'There's the dwarfs,' said Mr Boggis. 'Even if one of us - not that I'm saying it would be one of us, of course - even if someone took over, what about the dwarfs? We get someone like Snapcase again, there's going to be chopped kneecaps in the streets.'

'You're not suggesting we have some sort of... vote, are you? Some kind of popularity contest?'

'Oh, no. It's just... it's just ... all more complicated now. And power goes to people's heads.'

'And then other people's heads fall off.'

'I wish you wouldn't keep on saying that, whoever you are,' said Mrs Palm. 'Anyone would think you'd had your head cut off.'

'Uh - '

'Oh, it's you, Mr Slant. I do apologize.'

'Speaking as the President of the Guild of Lawyers,' said Mr Slant, the most respected zombie in Ankh-Morpork, 'I must recommend stability in this matter. I wonder if I may offer some advice?'

'How much will it cost us?' said Mr Sock.

'Stability,' said Mr Slant, 'equals monarchy.'

'Oh, now, don't tell us - '

'Look at Klatch,' said Mr Slant doggedly. 'Generations of Seriphs. Result: political stability. Take Pseudopolis. Or Sto Lat. Or even the Agatean Empire - '

'Come on,' said Dr Downey. 'Everyone knows that kings - '

'Oh, monarchs come and go, they depose one another, and so on and so forth,' said Mr Slant. 'But the institution goes on. Besides, I think you'll find that it is possible to work out ... an accommodation.'

He realized that he had the floor. His fingers absent-mindedly touched the seam where his head had been sewn back on. All those years ago Mr Slant had refused to die until he had been paid for the disbursements in the matter of conducting his own defence.

'How do you mean?' said Mr Potts.

'I accept that the question of resurrecting the Ankh-Morpork succession has been raised several times recently,' said Mr Slant.

'Yes. By madmen,' said Mr Boggis. It's part of the symptoms. Put underpants on head, talk to trees, drool, decide that Ankh-Morpork needs a king...'

'Exactly. Supposing sane men were to give it consideration?'

'Go on,' said Dr Downey. 'There have been precedents,' said Mr Slant. 'Monarchies who have found themselves bereft of a convenient monarch have... obtained one. Some suitably born member of some other royal line. After all, what is required is someone who, uh, knows the ropes, as I believe the saying goes.'

'Sorry? Are you saying we send out for a king?' said Mr Boggis. 'We put up some kind of advertisement? Throne vacant, applicant must supply own crown ?'

'In fact,' said Mr Slant, ignoring this, 'I recall that, during the first Empire, Genua wrote to Ankh-Morpork and asked to be sent one of our generals to be their king, their own royal lines having died out through interbreeding so intensively that the last king kept trying to breed with himself. The history books say that we sent our loyal General Tacticus, whose first act after obtaining the crown was to declare a war on Ankh-Morpork. Kings are ... interchangeable.'

'You mentioned something about reaching an accommodation,' said Mr Boggis. 'You mean, we tell a king what to doT

'I like the sound of that,' said Mrs Palm.

'I like the echoes,' said Dr Downey.

'Not tell,' said Mr Slant. 'We... agree. Obviously, as king, he would concentrate on those things traditionally associated with kingship - '

'Waving,' said Mr Sock.

'Being gracious,' said Mrs Palm.

'Welcoming ambassadors from foreign countries,' said Mr Potts.

'Shaking hands.'

'Cutting off heads - '

'No! No. No, that will not be part of his duties. Minor affairs of state will be carried out - '

'By his advisors?' said Dr Downey. He leaned back. 'I'm sure I can see where this is going, Mr Slant,' he said. 'But kings, once acquired, are so damn hard to get rid of. Acceptably.'

There have been precedents for that, too,' said Mr Slant.

The Assassin's eyes narrowed.

Tm intrigued, Mr Slant, that as soon as the Lord Vetinari appears to be seriously ill, you pop up with suggestions like this. It sounds like ... a remarkable coincidence.'

There is no mystery, I assure you. Destiny works its course. Surely many of you have heard the rumours - that there is, in this city, someone with a bloodline traceable all the way back to the last royal family? Someone working in this very city in a comparatively humble position? A lowly Watchman, in fact?'

There were some nods, but not very definite ones. They were to nods what a grunt is to 'yes'. The guilds all picked up information. No one wanted to reveal how much, or how little, they personally knew, just in case they knew too little or, even worse, turned out to know too much.

However, Doc Pseudopolis of the Guild of Gamblers put on a careful poker face and said, 'Yes, but the tricentennial is coming up. And in a few years it'll be the Century of the Rat. There's something about centuries that gives people a kind of fever.'

'Nevertheless, the person exists,' said Mr Slant. The evidence stares one in the face if one looks in the right places.'

'Very well,' said Mr Boggis. Tell us the name of this captain.' He often lost large sums at poker.

'Captain?' said Mr Slant. 'I'm sorry to say his natural talents have thus far not commended him to that extent. He is a corporal. Corporal C. W. St J. Nobbs.'

There was silence.

And then there was a strange putt-putting sound, like water negotiating its way through a partially blocked pipe.

Queen Molly of the Beggars' Guild had so far been silent apart from occasional damp sucking noises as she tried to dislodge a particle of her lunch from the things which, because they were still in her mouth and apparently attached, were technically her teeth.

Now she was laughing. The hairs wobbled on every wart. 'Nobby Nobbs?' she said. 'You're talking about Nobby Nobbs?

'He is the last known descendant of the Earl of Ankh, who could trace his descent all the way to a distant cousin to the last king/ said Mr Slant. 'It's the talk of the city.'

'A picture forms in my mind,' said Dr Downey. 'Small monkeylike chap, always smoking very short cigarettes. Spotty. He squeezes them in public.'

'That's Nobby!' Queen Molly chuckled. 'Face like a blind carpenter's thumb!'

'Him? But the man's a tit!'

'And dim as a penny candle,' said Mr Boggis. 'I don't see - '

Suddenly he stopped, and then contracted the contemplative silence that was gradually affecting everyone else around the table.

'Don't see why we shouldn't... give this... due consideration,' he said, after a while.

The assembled leaders looked at the table. Then they looked at the ceiling. Then they studiously avoided one another's gaze.

'Blood will out,' said Mr Carry.

'When I've watched him go down the street I've always thought: There's a man who walks in greatness, ' said Mrs Palm.

'He squeezes them in a very regal way, mind you. Very graciously.'

The silence rolled over the assembly again. But it was busy, in the same way that the silence of an anthill is busy.

'I must remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that poor Lord Vetinari is still alive,' said Mrs Palm.

'Indeed, indeed,' said Mr Slant. 'And long may he remain so. I've merely set out for you one option against that day, may it be a long time coming, when we should consider a ... successor.'

'In any case,' said Dr Downey, 'there is no doubt that Vetinari has been over-doing it. If he survives -which is greatly to be hoped, of course - I feel we should require him to step down for the sake of his health. Well done thou good and faithful servant, and so on. Buy him a nice house in the country somewhere. Give him a pension. Make sure there's a seat for him at official dinners. Obviously, if he can be so easily poisoned now he should welcome the release from the chains of office

'What about the wizards?' said Mr Boggis.

'They've never got involved in civic concerns,' said Dr Downey. 'Give 'em four meat meals a day and tip your hat to them and they're happy. They know nothing about politics.'

The silence that followed was broken by the voice of Queen Molly of the Beggars. 'What about Vimes?'

Dr Downey shrugged. 'He is a servant of the city.'

'That's what I mean.'

'Surely we represent the city?'

'Hah! He won't see it that way. And you know what Vimes thinks about kings. It was a Vimes who chopped the head off the last one. There's a bloodline that thinks a swing of an axe can solve anything.'

'Now, Molly, you know Vimes'd probably take an axe to Vetinari if he thought he could get away with it. No love lost there, I fancy.'

'He won't like it. That's all I tell you. Vetinari keeps Vimes wound up. No knowing what happens if he unwinds all at once - '

'He's a public servant!' snapped Dr Downey.

Queen Molly made a face, which was not difficult in one so naturally well endowed, and sat back. 'So this is the new way of things, is it?' she muttered. 'Lot of ordinary men sit around a table and talk and suddenly the world's a different place? The sheep turn round and charge the shepherd?'

'There's a soiree at Lady Selachii's house this evening,' said Dr Downey, ignoring her. 'I believe Nobbs is being invited. Perhaps we can... meet him.'

Vimes told himself he was really going to inspect the progress on the new Watch House in Chittling Street. Cockbill Street was just round the corner. And then he'd call in, informally. No sense in sparing a man when they were pushed anyway, what with these murders and Vetinari and Detritus's anti-Slab crusade.

He turned the corner, and stopped.

Nothing much had changed. That was the shocking thing. After... oh, too many years... things had no right not to have changed.

But washing lines still criss-crossed the street between the grey, ancient buildings. Antique paint still peeled in the way cheap paint peeled when it had been painted on wood too old and rotten to take paint. Cockbill Street people were usually too penniless to afford decent paint, but always far too proud to use whitewash.

And the place was slightly smaller than he remembered. That was all.

When had he last come down here? He couldn't remember. It was beyond the Shades, and up until quite recently the Watch had tended to leave that area to its own unspeakable devices.

Unlike the Shades, though, Cockbill Street was clean, with the haunting, empty cleanliness you get when people can't afford to waste dirt. For Cockbill Street was where people lived who were worse than poor, because they didn't know how poor they were. If you asked them they would probably say something like 'mustn't grumble' or 'there's far worse off than us' or 'we've always kept uz heads above water and we don't owe nobody nowt'.

He could hear his granny speaking. 'No one's too poor to buy soap.' Of course, many people were. But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but, by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride.

What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that ?

Cockbill Street people would stand aside to let the meek through. For what kept them in Cockbill Street, mentally and physically, was their vague comprehension that there were rules. And they went through life filled with a quiet, distracted dread that they weren't quite obeying them.

People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn't true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people.

It was oddly quiet. Normally there'd be swarms of kids, and carts heading down towards the docks, but today the place had a shut-in look.

In the middle of the road was a chalked hopscotch path.

Vimes felt his knees go weak. It was still here! When had he last seen it? Thirty-five years ago? Forty? So it must have been drawn and redrawn thousands of times.

He'd been pretty good at it. Of course, they'd played it by Ankh-Morpork rules. Instead of kicking a stone they'd kicked William Scuggins. It had been just one of the many inventive games they'd played which had involved kicking, chasing or jumping on William Scuggins until he threw one of his famous wobblers and started frothing and violently attacking himself.

Vimes had been able to drop William in the square of his choice nine times out often. The tenth time, William bit his leg.

In those days, tormenting William and finding enough to eat had made for a simple, straightforward life. There weren't so many questions you didn't know the answers to, except maybe how to stop your leg festering.

Sir Samuel looked around, saw the silent street, and flicked a stone out of the gutter with his foot. Then he booted it surreptitiously along the squares, adjusted his cloak, and hopped and jumped his way up, turned, hopped -

What was it you shouted as you hopped? 'Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper?'? No? Or was it the one that went 'William Scuggins is a bastard'? Now he'd wonder about that all day.

A door opened across the street. Vimes froze, one leg in mid-air, as two black-clothed figures came out slowly and awkwardly.

This was because they were carrying a coffin.

The natural solemnity of the occasion was diminished by their having to squeeze around it and out into the street, pulling the casket after them and allowing two other pairs of bearers to edge their way into the daylight.

Vimes remembered himself in time to lower his other foot, and then remembered even more of himself and snatched his helmet off in respect.

Another coffin emerged. It was a lot smaller. It needed only two people to carry it and that was really one too many.

As mourners trooped out behind them, Vimes fumbled in a pocket for the scrap of paper Detritus had given him. The scene was, in its way, funny, like the bit in a circus where the coach stops and a dozen clowns get out of it. Apartment houses round here made up for their limited number of rooms by having a large number of people occupy them.

He found the paper and unfolded it. First Floor Back, 27 Cockbill Street.

And this was it. He'd arrived in time for a funeral. Two funerals.

'Looks like it's a really bad day to be a golem,' said Angua. There was a pottery hand lying in the gutter. 'That's the third one we've seen smashed in the street.'

There was a crash up ahead, and a dwarf came through a window more or less horizontally. His iron helmet struck sparks as he hit the street, but the dwarf was soon up again and plunging back through the adjacent doorway.

He emerged via the window a moment later but was fielded by Carrot, who set him on his feet.

'Hello, Mr Oresmiter! Are you keeping well? And what is happening here?'

'It's that devil Gimlet, Captain Carrot! You should be arresting him!'

'Why, what's he done?'

'He's been poisoning people, that's what!'

Carrot glanced at Angua, then back at Oresmiter. 'Poison?' he said. That's a very serious allegation.'

'You're telling me! I was up all night with Mrs Oresmiter! I didn't think much about it until I came in here this morning and there were other people complaining - '

He tried to struggle out of Carrot's grip. 'You know what?' he said. 'You know what? We looked in his cold room and you know what? You know what? You know what he's been selling as meat?'

'Tell me,' said Carrot.

'Pork and beef!'

'Oh, dear.'

'And lamb!'

'Teh, tch.'

'Hardly any rat at all!'

Carrot shook his head at the duplicity of traders.

'And Snori Glodssonsunclesson said he had Rat Surprise last night and he'll swear there were chicken bones in it!'

Carrot let go of the dwarf. 'You stay here,' he said to Angua and, head bowed, stepped inside Gimlet's Hole Food Delicatessen.

An axe spun towards him. He caught it almost absent-mindedly and tossed it casually aside.

'Ow!'

There was a melee of dwarfs around the counter. The row had already gone well past the stage when it had anything much to do with the subject in hand and, these being dwarfs, now included matters of vital importance such as whose grandfather had stolen whose grandfather's mining claim three hundred years ago and whose axe was at whose throat right now.

But there was something about Carrot's presence. The fighting gradually stopped. The fighters tried to look as if they'd just happened to be standing there. There was a sudden and general 'Axe? What axe? Oh, this axe? I was just showing it to my friend Bjorn here, good old Bjorn' feel to the atmosphere.

'All right,' said Carrot. 'What's all this about poison? Mr Gimlet first.'

'It's a diabolical lie!' shouted Gimlet, from somewhere under the heap. 'I run a wholesome restaurant! My tables are so clean you could eat your dinner off them!'

Carrot raised his hands to stop the outburst this caused. 'Someone said something about rats,' he said.

'I told them, I use only the very best rats!' shouted Gimlet. 'Good plump rats from the best locations! None of your latrine rubbish! And they're hard to come by, let me tell you!'

'And when you can't get them, Mr Gimlet?' said Carrot.

Gimlet paused. Carrot was hard to lie to. 'All right,' he mumbled. 'Maybe when there's not enough I might sort of plump out the stock with some chicken, maybe just a bit of beef - '

'Hah! A bit?' More voices were raised.

'That's right, you should see his cold room, Mr Carrot!'

'Yeah, he uses steak and cuts little legs in it and covers it with rat sauce!'

'I don't know, you try to do your best at very reasonable prices and this is the thanks you get?' said Gimlet hotly. 'It's hard enough to make ends meet as it is!'

'You don't even make 'em of the right meat!'

Carrot sighed. There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.

'All right,' he said. 'But you can't get poisoned by steak. No, honestly. No. No, shut up, all of you. No, I don't care what your mothers told you. Now, I want to know about this poisoning, Gimlet.'

Gimlet struggled to his feet.

'We did Rat Surprise last night for the Sons of Bloodaxe annual dinner,' he said. There was a general groan. 'And it was rat.' He raised his voice against the complaining. 'You can't use anything else - listen - you've got to have the noses poking through the pastry, all right? Some of the best rat we've had in for a long time, let me tell you!'

'And you were all ill afterwards?' said Carrot, taking out his notebook.

'Sweating all night!'

'Couldn't see straight!'

'I reckon I know every knothole on the back of the privy door!'

'I'll write that down as a definitely ,' said Carrot. 'Was there anything else on the dinner menu?'

'Vole-au-vents and Cream of Rat,' said Gimlet. 'All hygienically prepared.'

'How do you mean, hygienically prepared ?' said Carrot.

'The chef is under strict orders to wash his hands afterwards.'

The assembled dwarfs nodded. This was certainly pretty hygienic. You didn't want people going around with ratty hands.

'Anyway, you've all been eating here for years,' said Gimlet, sensing this slight veer in his direction. This is the first time there's been any trouble, isn't it? My rats are famous!'

'Your chicken's going to be pretty famous, too,' said Carrot.

There was laughter this time. Even Gimlet joined in. 'All right, I'm sorry about the chicken. But it was that or very poor rats, and you know I only buy from Wee Mad Arthur. He's trustworthy, whatever else you may say about him. You just can't get better rats. Everyone knows that.'

That'll be Wee Mad Arthur in Gleam Street?' said Carrot.

'Yes. Not a mark on 'em, most of the time.'

'Have you got any left?'

'One or two.' Gimlet's expression changed. 'Here, you don't think he poisoned them, do you? I never did trust that little bugger!'

'Enquiries are continuing,' said Carrot. He tucked his notebook away. 'I'd like some rats, please. Those rats. To go.' He glanced at the menu, patted his pocket and looked questioningly out through the door at Angua.

'You don't have to buy them,' she said wearily. They're evidence.'

'We can't defraud an innocent tradesman who may be the victim of circumstances,' said Carrot.

'You want ketchup?' said Gimlet. 'Only they're extra with ketchup.'

The funeral carriage went slowly through the streets. It looked quite expensive, but that was Cockbill Street for you. People put money by. Vimes remembered that. You always put money by, in Cockbill Street. You saved up for a rainy day even if it was pouring already. And you'd die of shame if people thought you could afford only a cheap funeral.

Half a dozen black-clad mourners came along behind, together with perhaps a score of people who had tried at least to look respectable.

Vimes followed the procession at a distance all the way to the cemetery behind the Temple of Small Gods, where he lurked awkwardly among the gravestones and sombre graveyard trees while the priest mumbled on.

The gods had made the people of Cockbill Street poor, honest and provident, Vimes reflected. They might as well have hung signs saying 'Kick me' on their backs and had done with it. Yet Cockbill Street people tended towards religion, at least of the less demonstrative kind. They always put a little life by for a rainy eternity.

Eventually the crowd around the graves broke up and drifted away with the aimless look of people whose immediate future contains ham rolls.

Vimes spotted a tearful young woman in the main group and advanced carefully. 'Er... are you Mildred Easy?' he said.

She nodded. 'Who are you?' She took in the cut of his coat and added, 'sir?'

Was that old Mrs Easy who used to do dressmaking?' said Vimes, taking her gently aside.

That's right

'And the... smaller coffin?'

'That was our William¨C'

The girl looked as if she were about to cry again.

'Can we have a talk?' said Vimes. There are some things I hope you can tell me.'

He hated the way his mind worked. A proper human being would have shown respect and quietly walked away. But, as he'd stood among the chilly stones, a horrible apprehension had stolen over him that almost all the answers were in place now, if only he could work out the questions.

She looked around at the other mourners. They had reached the gate and were staring back curiously at the two of them.

'Er ... I know this isn't the right time,' said Vimes. 'But, when the kids play hopscotch in the street, what's the rhyme they sing? Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper? , isn't it?'

She stared at his worried grin. That's a skipping rhyme,' she said coldly. 'When they play hopscotch they sing Billy Skunkins is a brass stud . Who are you?'

'I'm Commander Vimes of the Watch,' said Vimes. So ... Willy Scuggins would live on in the street, in disguise and in a fashion... And old Stoneface was just some guy on a bonfire...

Then her tears came.

'It's all right, it's all right,' said Vimes, as soothingly as he could. 'I was brought up in Cockbill Street, that's why I ... I mean I'm... I'm not here on ... I'm not out to ... look, I know you took food home from the palace. That's all right by me. I'm not here to ... oh, damn, would you like my handkerchief? I think your one's full.'

'Everyone does it!'

'Yes, I know.'

'Anyway, cook never says nothing ... She began to sob again.

'Yes, yes.'

'Everyone takes a few things,' said Mildred Easy. 'It's not like stealing.'

It is, thought Vimes treacherously. But I don't give a damn.

And now... he'd got a grip on the long copper rod and was climbing into a high place while the thunder muttered around him. The, er, the last food you sto -  were given,' he said. 'What was it?'

'Just some blancmange and some, you know, that sort of jam made out of meat...'

'Pate?'

'Yes. I thought it would be a little treat...

Vimes nodded. Rich, mushy food. The sort you'd give to a baby who was peaky and to a granny who hadn't got any teeth.

Well, he was on the roof now, the clouds were black and threatening, and he might as well wave the lightning conductor. Time to ask...

The wrong question, as it proved.

Tell me,' he said, 'what did Mrs Easy die of?'