Lords And Ladies

'Oh, yes,' said Magrat. 'The Entertainment.'

'Right,' said Nanny. 'It's going to be on Midsummer's Eve.'

'It's got to be special, on Midsummer's Eve,' said Jason Ogg.

The door to the smithy had been bolted shut. Within were the eight members of the Lancre Morris Men, six times winners of the Fifteen Mountains All-Comers Morris Championship[10] , now getting to grips with a new art form.

'I feel a right twit,' said Bestiality Carter, Lancre's only baker. 'A dress on! I just hope my wife doesn't see me!'

'Says here,' said Jason Ogg, his enormous forefinger hesitantly tracing its way along the page, 'that it's a beaut-i-ful story of the love of the Queen of the Fairies — that's you, Bestiality-'

'-thank you very much-'

'-for a mortal man. Plus a hum-our-rus int-ter-lude with Comic Artisans. . .'

'What's an artisan?' said Weaver the thatcher.

'Dunno. Type of well, I reckon.' Jason scratched his head. 'Yeah. They've got 'em down on the plains. I repaired a pump for one once. Artisan wells.'

'What's comic about them?'

'Maybe people fall down 'em in a funny way?'

'Why can't we do a Morris like normal?' said Obidiah Carpenter the tailor[11].

'Morris is for every day,' said Jason. 'We got to do something cultural. This come all the way from Ankh- Morpork.'

'We could do the Stick and Bucket Dance,' volunteered Baker the weaver.

'No one is to do the Stick and Bucket Dance ever again,' said Jason. 'Old Mr. Thrum still walks with a limp, and it were three months ago.'

Weaver the thatcher squinted at his copy of the script.

'Who's this bugger Exeunt Omnes' he said.

'I don't think much of my part,' said Carpenter, 'it's too small.'

'It's his poor wife I feel sorry for,' said Weaver, automatically.

'Why?' said Jason[13].

'And why's there got to be a lion in it?' said Baker the weaver.

''Cos it's a play!' said Jason. 'No one'd want to see it if it had a . . . a donkey in it! Oi can just see people comin' to see a play 'cos it had a donkey in it. This play was written by a real playsmith! Hah, I can just see a real playsmith putting donkeys in a play! He says he'll be very interested to hear how we get on! Now just you all shut up!'

'I don't feel like the Queen of the Fairies,' moaned Bestiality Carter[14].

'You'll grow into it,' said Weaver.

'I hope not.'

'And you've got to rehearse,' said Jason.

'There's no room,' said Thatcher the carter.

'Well, I ain't doin' it where anyone else can see,' said Bestiality. 'Even if we go out in the woods somewhere, people'll be bound to see. Me in a dress!'

'They won't recognize you in your makeup,' said Weaver.

'Make-up?'

'Yeah, and your wig,' said Tailor the other weaver. 'He's right, though,' said Weaver. 'If we're going to make fools of ourselves, I don't want no one to see me until we're good at it.'

'Somewhere off the beaten track, like,' said Thatcher the carter.

'Out in the country,' said Tinker the tinker.

'Where no one goes,' said Carter.

Jason scratched his cheese-grater chin. He was bound to

think of somewhere.

'And who's going to play Exeunt Omnes?' said Weaver.

'He doesn't have much to say, does he?'

The coach rattled across the featureless plains. The land between Ankh-Morpork and the Ramtops was fertile, well-cultivated and dull, dull, dull. Travel broadens the mind. This landscape broadened the mind because the mind just flowed out from the ears like porridge. It was the kind of landscape where, if you saw a distant figure cutting cabbages, you'd watch him until he was out of sight because there was simply nothing else for the eye to do.

'I spy,' said the Bursar, 'with my little eye, something beginning with . . . H.'

'Oook.'

'No.'

'Horizon,' said Ponder.

'You guessed!'

'Of course I guessed. I'm supposed to guess. We've had S for Sky, C for Cabbage, 0 for . . . for Ook, and there's nothing else.'

'I'm not going to play anymore if you're going to guess.' The Bursar pulled his hat down over his ears and tried to curl up on the hard seat.

'There'll be lots to see in Lancre,' said the Archchancellor. 'The only piece of flat land they've got up there is in a museum.'

Ponder said nothing.

'Used to spend whole summers up there,' said Ridcully. He sighed. 'You know . . . things could have been very different.'

Ridcully looked around. If you're going to relate an intimate piece of personal history, you want to be sure it's going to be heard.

The Librarian looked out at the jolting scenery. He was sulking. This had a lot to do with the new bright blue collar around his neck with the word 'PONGO' on it. Someone was going to suffer for this.

The Bursar was trying to use his hat like a limpet uses its shell.

'There was this girl.'

Ponder Stibbons, chosen by a cruel fate to be the only one listening, looked surprised. He was aware that, technically, even the Archchancellor had been young once. After all, it was just a matter of time. Common sense suggested that wizards didn't flash into existence aged seventy and weighing nineteen stone. But common sense needed reminding.

He felt he ought to say something.

'Pretty, was she, sir?' he said.

'No. No, I can't say she was. Striking. That's the word. Tall. Hair so blond it was nearly white. And eyes like gimlets, I tell you.'

Ponder tried to work this out.

'You don't mean that dwarf who runs the delicatessen in-' he began.

'I mean you always got the impression she could see right through you,' said Ridcully, slightly more sharply than he had intended. 'And she could run . . .'

He lapsed into silence again, staring at the newsreels of memory.

'I would've married her, you know,' he said.

Ponder said nothing. When you're a cork in someone else's stream of consciousness, all you can do is spin and bob in the eddies.

'What a summer,' murmured Ridcully. 'Very like this one, really. Crop circles were bursting like raindrops. And . . . well, I was having doubts, you know. Magic didn't seem to be enough. I was a bit . . . lost. I'd have given it all up for her. Every blasted octogram and magic spell. Without a second thought. You know when they say things