Maskerade

“Er, yes,” said Agnes.

“I've been waiting for this day for years!”

Agnes had been waiting for it for about twenty-four hours, ever since she'd seen the notice outside the Opera House. But she'd be danged if she'd say that.

“Where did you train?!” said Christine. “I spent three years with Mme Venturi at the Quirm Conservatory!”

“Um. I was…” Agnes hesitated, trying out the upcoming sentence in her head. “… I trained with… Dame Ogg. But she hasn't got a conservatory, because it's hard to get the glass up the mountain.”

Christine didn't appear to want to question this. Anything she found too difficult to understand, she ignored.

“The money in the chorus isn't very good, is it?!” she said.

“No.” It was less than you'd get for scrubbing floors. The reason was that, when you advertised a dirty floor, hundreds of hopefuls didn't turn up.

“But it's what I've always wanted to do! Besides, there's the status!”

“Yes, I expect there is.”

“I've been to look at the rooms we get! They're very poky! What room have you been given?!”

Agnes looked down blankly at the key she had been handed, along with many sharp instructions about no men and an unpleasant not?that?you?need?telling expression on the chorus mistress's face.

“Oh… 17.”

Christine clapped her hands. “Oh, goody!!”

“Pardon?”

“I'm so glad!! You're next to me!!”

Agnes was taken aback. She'd always been resigned to being the last to be picked in the great team game of Life.

“Well… yes, I suppose so…” she said.

“You're so lucky!! You've got such a majestic figure for opera!! And such marvellous hair, the way you pile it up like that!! Black suits you, by the way!!”

Majestic, thought Agnes. It was a word that would never, ever have occurred to her. And she'd always steered away from white because in white she looked like a washing?line on a windy day.

She followed Christine.

It occurred to Agnes, as she trudged after the girl en route to her new lodgings, that if you spent much time in the same room as Christine you'd need to open a window to stop from drowning in punctuation.

From somewhere at the back of the stage, quite unheeded, someone watched them go.

People were generally glad to see Nanny Ogg. She was good at making them feel at home in their own home.

But she was a witch, and therefore also expert at arriving just after cakes were baked or sausages were made. Nanny Ogg generally travelled with a string bag stuffed up one knee?length knicker leg — in case, as she put it, someone wants to give me something.

“So, Mrs Nitt,” she observed, around about the third cake and fourth cup of tea, “how's that daughter of yours? Agnes it is to whom I refer.”

“Oh, didn't you hear, Mrs Ogg? She's gone off to Ankh-Morpork to be a singer.”

Nanny Ogg's heart sank.

“That's nice,” she said. “She has a good singing voice, I remember. Of course, I gave her a few tips. I used to hear her singing in the woods.”

“It's the air here,” said Mrs Nitt. “She's always had such a good chest.”

“Yes, indeed. Noted for it. So… er… she's not here, then?”

“You know our Agnes. She never says much. I think she thought it was a bit dull.”

“Dull? Lancre?” said Nanny Ogg.

“That's what I said,” said Mrs Nitt. “I said we get some lovely sunsets up here. And there's the fair every Soul Cake Tuesday, regular.”

Nanny Ogg thought about Agnes. You needed quite large thoughts to fit all of Agnes in.

Lancre had always bred strong, capable women. A Lancre farmer needed a wife who'd think nothing of beating a wolf to death with her apron when she went out to get some firewood. And, while kissing initially seemed to have more charms than cookery, a stolid Lancre lad looking for a bride would bear in mind his father's advice that kisses eventually lost their fire but cookery tended to get even better over the years, and direct his courting to those families that clearly showed a tradition of enjoying their food.

Agnes was, Nanny considered, quite good-looking in an expansive kind of way; she was a fine figure of typical young Lancre womanhood. This meant she was approximately two womanhoods from anywhere else.

Nanny also recalled her as being rather thoughtful and shy, as if trying to reduce the amount of world she took up.

But she had shown signs of craft ability. That was only to be expected. There was nothing like that not fitting in feeling to stimulate the old magical nerves; that was why Esme was so good at it. In Agnes's case this had manifested itself in a tendency to wear soppy black lace gloves and pale makeup and call herself Perdita plus an initial from the arse of the alphabet, but Nanny had assumed that would soon burn off when she got some serious witchcraft under her rather strained belt.

She should have paid more attention to the thing about music. Power found its way out by all sorts of routes…

Music and magic had a lot in common. They were only two letters apart, for one thing. And you couldn't do both.

Damn. Nanny had rather been counting on the girl.

“She used to send off to Ankh?Morpork for music,” said Mrs Nitt. “See?”

She handed Nanny several piles of papers.

Nanny leafed through them. Song?sheets were common enough in the Ramtops, and a singsong in the parlour was considered the third best thing to do on long dark evenings. But Nanny could see this wasn't ordinary music. It was far too crowded for that.

“Cosi fan Hita,” she read. “Die Meistersinger von Scrote.”

“That's foreign,” said Mrs Nitt proudly.

“It certainly is,” said Nanny.

Mrs Nitt was looking expectantly at her.

“What?” said Nanny, and then, “Oh.”

Mrs Nitt's eyes flickered to her emptied teacup and back again.

Nanny Ogg sighed and laid the music aside. Occasionally she saw Granny Weatherwax's point. Sometimes people expected too little of witches.

“Yes, indeedy,” she said, trying to smile. “Let us see what destiny in the form of these dried?up bits of leaf has in store for us, eh?”

She set her features in a suitable occult expression and looked down into the cup.

Which, a second later, smashed into fragments when it hit the floor.

It was a small room. In fact it was half a small room, since a thin wall had been built across it. Junior members of the chorus ranked rather lower than apprentice scene?shifters in the opera.

There was room for a bed, a wardrobe, a dressing-table and, quite out of place, a huge mirror, as big as the door.

“Impressive, isn't it?!” said Christine. “They tried to take it out but it's built into the wall, apparently!! I'm sure it will be very useful!!”