Snuff

Aristocrats don’t notice philosophical conundra. They just ignore them. Philosophy includes contemplating the possibility that you might be wrong, sir, and a real aristocrat knows that he is always right. It’s not vanity, you understand, it’s built-in absolute certainty. They may sometimes be as mad as a hatful of spoons, but they are always definitely and certainly mad.’

Vimes stared at him in admiration. ‘How the hell do you know all this, Willikins?’

‘Watched them, sir. In the good old days when her ladyship’s granddad was alive he made certain that the whole staff of Scoone Avenue came down here with the family in the summer. As you know, I’m not much of a scholar and, truth to tell, neither are you, but when you grow up on the street you learn fast because if you don’t learn fast you’re dead.’

They were now walking across an ornamental bridge, over what was probably the trout stream and, Vimes assumed, a tributary of Old Treachery, a name whose origin he had yet to comprehend. Two men and one little boy, walking over a bridge that might be carrying crowds, and carts and horses. The world seemed unbalanced.

‘You see, sir,’ said Willikins, ‘being definite is what gave them all this money and land. Sometimes lost it for them as well, of course. One of Lady Sybil’s great-uncles once lost a villa and two thousand acres of prime farmland by being definite in believing that a cloakroom ticket could beat three aces. He was killed in the duel that followed, but at least he was definitely dead.’

‘It’s snobbishness and I don’t like it,’ Vimes said.

Willikins rubbed the side of his nose. ‘Well, commander, it ain’t snobbishness. You don’t get much of that from the real McCoy, in my experience. The certain ones, I mean … they don’t worry about what the neighbours think or walking around in old clothes. They’re confident, see? When Lady Sybil was younger the family would come down here for the sheep-shearing, and her father would muck in with everybody else, with his sleeves rolled up and everything, and he’d see to it that there was a round of beer for all the lads afterwards, and he’d drink with them, flagon for flagon. Of course, he was a brandy man mostly, so a bit of beer wouldn’t have him on the floor. He never worried about who he was. He was a decent old boy, her father – and her granddad, too. Certain, you see, never worried.’

They walked along an avenue of chestnut trees for a while and then Vimes said, morosely, ‘Are you saying that I don’t know who I am?’

Willikins looked up into the trees and replied, thoughtfully, ‘It looks as though there’ll be a lot of conkers this year, commander, and if you don’t mind me suggesting it, you might think of bringing this young lad down here when they start falling. I was the dead-rat conkers champion for years when I was a kid, until I found out that the real things grew on trees and didn’t squish so easily. As for your question,’ he went on, ‘I think Sam Vimes is at his best when he’s confident that he’s Sam Vimes. Good grief, and they are fruiting early this year!’

The avenue of chestnut trees ended at this point and before them lay an apple orchard. ‘Not the best of fruit, as apples go,’ said Willikins as Vimes and Young Sam crossed over to it, raising the dust on the chalky road. The comment seemed inconsequential to Vimes, but Willikins appeared to consider the orchard very important.

‘The little boy will want to see this,’ Willikins said enthusiastically. ‘Saw it myself when I was the boot boy. Totally changed the way I thought about the world. The third earl, “Mad” Jack Ramkin, had a brother called Woolsthorpe, probably for his sins. He was something of a scholar and would have been sent to the university to become a wizard were it not for the fact that his brother let it be known that any male sibling of his who took up a profession that involved wearing a dress would be disinherited with a cleaver.

‘Nevertheless, young Woolsthorpe persevered in his studies of natural philosophy in the way a gentleman should, by digging into any suspicious-looking burial mounds he could find in the neighbourhood, filling up his lizard press with as many rare species as he could collect, and drying samples of any flowers he could find before they became extinct. The story runs that, on one warm summer day, he dozed off under an apple tree and was awakened when an apple fell on his head. A lesser man, as his biographer put it, would have seen nothing untoward about this, but Woolsthorpe surmised that, since apples and practically everything else always fell down, then the world would eventually become dangerously unbalanced … unless there was another agency involved that natural philosophy had yet to discover. He lost no time in dragging one of the footmen to the orchard and ordering him, on pain of dismissal, to lie under the tree until an apple hit him on the head! The possibility of this happening was increased by another footman who had been told by Woolsthorpe to shake the tree vigorously until the required apple fell. Woolsthorpe was ready to observe this from a distance.

‘Who can imagine his joy when the inevitable apple fell and a second apple was seen rising from the tree and disappearing at speed into the vaults of heaven, proving the hypothesis that what goes up must come down, provided that what goes down must come up, thus safeguarding the equilibrium of the universe. Regrettably, this only works with apples and, amazingly, only the apples on this one tree, Malus equilibria! I hear someone has worked out that the apples at the top of the tree fill with gas and fly up when the tree is disturbed so that it can set its seeds some way off. Wonderful thing, nature, shame the fruit tastes like dog’s business,’ Willikins added as Young Sam spat some out. ‘To tell you the truth, commander, I wouldn’t give you tuppence for a lot of the upper classes I’ve met, especially in the city, but some of them in these old country houses changed the world for the better. Like Turnip Ramkin, who revolutionized agriculture …’

‘I think I’ve heard of him,’ said Vimes. ‘Wasn’t he something to do with planting root crops? Wasn’t that how he got his nickname?’

‘Very nearly right, sir,’ said Willikins. ‘In fact, he invented the seed drill, which meant more reliable crops and a great saving in seed corn. He only looked like a turnip. People can be so cruel sometimes, sir. There was also his brother, “Rubber Ramkin”, who devised not only rubber boots but also rubberized fabric, even before the dwarfs did. Very interested indeed in rubber, so I heard, but it takes all sorts to make a world and it would be a funny old place if we were all the same, and especially if we were all like him. Dry feet and dry shoulders, sir, what every farmworker prays for! I did a spell cutting cabbages one winter, sir, weather as cold as charity and rain coming down so fast it had to queue up to hit the ground. I blessed his name then, so I did, even if it was true what they said about the young ladies, who I heard actually enjoyed the experience …’

‘This is all very well,’ said Vimes, ‘but it doesn’t make up for all the stupid, arrogant—’

This time it was Willikins who interrupted his master. ‘And then there was the flying machine, of course. Her ladyship’s late brother put a lot of work into the project, but it never got off the ground. Flying without a broomstick or a magic spell was his goal, but regrettably he fell victim to the outbreak of crisms, poor lad. There’s a model of it in the nursery, as a matter of fact. It runs on rubber bands.’

‘I expect there was plenty of material around the place, unless Rubber Ramkin tidied up after himself,’ said Vimes.

The tour continued, across meadows of what Vimes decided to call cows and around fields of standing corn. They navigated their way around a ha-ha, kept their distance from the ho-ho and completely ignored the he-he, then climbed a gentle path up a hill on which was planted a grove of beech trees and from which you could see