Maskerade (30 page)

‘Yes,
Walter
!'

Another man hurried up, waving his lantern.

‘I saw the Ghost heading up to the roof! And there was some big one-eyed bastard going after him like a scalded cat!'

That's wrong
, thought Nanny.
Something wrong here
.

‘To the roof!' shouted Salzella.

‘Hadn't we better get the flaming torches first?'

‘Flaming torches are not compulsory!'

‘Pitchforks and scythes?'

‘That's only for vampires!'

‘How about just
one
torch?'

‘Get up there now! Understand?'

The curtains closed. There was a smattering of applause which was barely audible above the chatter from the audience.

The chorus turned to one another. ‘Was that supposed to happen?'

Dust rained down. Stage-hands were scampering across the gantries far above. Shouts echoed among the ropes and dusty backdrops. A stage-hand ran across the stage, holding a flaming torch.

‘Here, what's going on?' said a tenor.

‘They've got the Ghost! He's heading for the roof! It's
Walter Plinge
!'

‘What, Walter?'

‘Our
Walter Plinge?'

‘Yes!'

The stage-hand ran on in a trail of sparks, leaving the yeast of rumour to ferment in the ready dough that was the chorus.

‘Walter? Surely not!'

‘Weeelll … he's a bit odd, isn't he …?'

‘But only this morning he said to me, “It's a nice day Mr Sidney!” Just like that. Normal as anything. Well … normal for Walter …'

‘As a matter of fact, it's always worried me, the way his eyes move as though they don't talk to each other—'

‘And he's always around the place!'

‘Yes, but he's the odd-job man—'

‘No argument about that!'

‘It's not Walter,' said Agnes.

They looked at her.

‘That's who he said they're chasing, dear.'

‘I don't know who they're chasing, but Walter's not the Ghost. Fancy anyone thinking Walter's the Ghost!' said Agnes, hotly. ‘He wouldn't hurt a fly! Anyway, I've seen—'

‘He's always struck me as a bit slimy, though.'

‘And they say he goes down into the cellars a lot. What for, I ask myself? Let's face it. Fair's fair. He's crazy.'

‘He doesn't act crazy!' said Agnes.

‘Well, he always looks as though he's about to, you must admit. I'm going to see what's happening. Anyone coming?'

Agnes gave up. It was a horrible thing to learn, but there are times when evidence gets trampled and the hunt is on.

A hatch flew open. The Ghost clambered out, looked down, and slammed the hatch shut. There was a yowl from below.

Then he danced across the leads until he reached the gargoyle-encrusted parapet, black and silver in the moonlight. The wind caught at his cloak as he ran along the very edge of the roof and dropped down again near another door.

And a gargoyle was suddenly no longer a gargoyle, but a figure that reached down suddenly and twitched off his mask.

It was like cutting strings.

‘Good evening, Walter,' said Granny, as he sagged to his knees.

‘Hello Missus Weatherwax!'

‘Mistress,' Granny corrected him. ‘Now stand up.'

There was a growl further along the roof, and then a thump. Bits of trapdoor rose for a moment against the moonlight.

‘It's nice up here, ain't it?' said Granny. ‘There's fresh air and stars. I thought: up or down? But there's only rats down below.'

In another swift movement she grabbed Walter's chin and tilted it, just as Greebo pulled himself on to the roof with prolonged murder in his heart.

‘How does your mind work, Walter Plinge? If your house was on fire, what's the first thing you'd try to take out?'

Greebo stalked along the rooftop, growling. He liked rooftops in general, and some of his fondest memories involved them, but a trapdoor had just been slammed on his head and he was looking for anything he could disembowel.

Then he recognized the shape of Walter Plinge as
someone who had given him food. And, standing right next to him, the much more unwelcome shape of Granny Weatherwax, who had once caught him digging in her garden and had kicked him in the cucumbers.

Walter said something. Greebo didn't take much notice of it.

Granny Weatherwax said: ‘Well done. A good answer. Greebo!'

Greebo nudged Walter heavily in the back.

‘Want milluk right noaow! Purr, purr!'

Granny thrust the mask at the cat. In the distance people were running up stairs and shouting.

‘You put this on! And you stay down real low, Walter Plinge. One man in a mask is pretty much like another, after all. And when they chase you, Greebo … give them a run for their money. Do it right and there could be—'

‘Yurr, I knoaow,' said Greebo despondently, taking the mask. It was turning out to be a long and busy evening for a kipper.

Someone poked their head out of the stricken trapdoor. The light glinted off Greebo's mask … and it had to be said, even by Granny, that he made a good Ghost. For one thing, his morphogenic field was trying to reassert itself. His claws could no longer even remotely be thought of as fingernails.

He spat at the pursuit as they poured up the steps, arched his back dramatically on the very edge of the roof, and stepped off.

One storey down he thrust out an arm, caught a windowsill, and landed on the head of a gargoyle,
which said ‘Oh, fank oo ver' mush' in a reproachful voice.

The pursuers looked down at him. Some of them
had
managed to get hold of flaming torches, because sometimes convention is too strong to be lightly denied.

Greebo snarled defiance and dropped again, springing from sill to drainpipe to balcony and pausing every now and again for another dramatic pose and another snarl at the pursuers.

‘We'd better get after him, Corporal de Nobbs,' said one of them, who was staggering along behind.

‘We'd better get after him by carefully going back down the stairs, you mean. 'cos somethin' I drank don't want to stay drunk. Much more runnin' and I'll be droppin' a custard, I'm tellin' you.'

The other members of the posse also seemed to be reaching the conclusion that there was no extended future in chasing a man down the sheer wall of a building. As one mob they turned and, shouting and waving their torches in the air, headed back to the stairs.

The parting crowd revealed Nanny Ogg, holding a pitchfork in one hand and a torch in the other and thrusting them both in the air while muttering, ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb.'

Granny walked over and tapped her on the shoulder. ‘They've gone, Gytha.'

‘Rhuba— Oh, hello, Esme,' said Nanny, lowering the implements of righteous retribution. ‘I was just tagging along to see it didn't get out of hand. Was that Greebo I saw just then?'

‘Yes.'

‘Awww, bless him,' said Nanny. ‘He looked a bit bothered, though. I hope he doesn't happen to anybody.'

‘Where's your broomstick?' said Granny.

‘It's in the cleaners' cupboard backstage.'

‘Then I'll borrow it and keep an eye on things,' said Granny.

‘Hey, he's
my
cat, I ought to be looking after him—' Nanny began.

Granny stepped aside, revealing a huddled shape sitting hugging its knees. ‘You look after Walter Plinge,' she said. ‘It's something you'd be better at than me.'

‘Hello Mrs Ogg!' said Walter, mournfully.

Nanny looked at him for a moment.

‘So he is the—?'

‘Yes.'

‘You mean he really did do the mur—?'

‘What do
you
think?' said Granny.

‘Well, if it comes to it, I think he didn't,' said Nanny. ‘Can I have a word in your ear, Esme? I don't reckon I should say this in front of young Walter.'

The witches bent their heads together. There was a brief whispered conversation.

‘Everything is simple when you know the answer,' said Granny. ‘I'll be back soon.'

She hurried off. Nanny heard her shoes clattering on the stairs.

Nanny looked down at Walter again, and held out her hand. ‘Up you get, Walter.'

‘Yes Mrs Ogg!'

‘I expect we'd better find somewhere for you to lie low, eh?'

‘I know a hidden place Mrs Ogg!'

‘You do, do you?'

Walter lurched across the roof towards another trapdoor, and pointed to it proudly.

‘That?' said Nanny. ‘That doesn't look very hidden to me, Walter.'

Walter gave it a puzzled look, and then grinned in the way a scientist might after he'd solved a particularly difficult equation. ‘It's hidden where everyone can see it Mrs Ogg!'

Nanny gave him a sharp look, but there was nothing but a slightly glazed innocence in Walter's eyes.

He lifted up the trapdoor and pointed politely downwards. ‘You go down the ladder first so I will not see your drawers!'

‘Very … kind of you,' said Nanny. It was the first time anyone had ever said anything like that to her.

The man waited patiently until she had reached the bottom of the ladder, and then climbed laboriously down after her.

‘This is just an old staircase, isn't it?' said Nanny, prodding at the darkness with her torch.

‘Yes! It goes all the way down! Except at the bottom where it goes all the way up!'

‘Anyone else know about it?'

‘The Ghost Mrs Ogg!' said Walter, climbing down.

‘Oh, yes,' said Nanny slowly. ‘And where's the Ghost now, Walter?'

‘He ran away!'

She held up the torch. There was still nothing to be read in Walter's expression. ‘What does the Ghost do here, Walter?'

‘He watches over the Opera!'

‘That's very kind of him, I'm sure.'

Nanny started downwards, and as the shadows danced around her she heard Walter say: ‘You know she asked me a very silly question Mrs Ogg! It was a silly question any fool knows the answer!'

‘Oh, yes,' said Nanny, peering at the walls. ‘About houses on fire, I expect …'

‘Yes! What would I take out of our house if it was on fire!'

‘I expect you were a good boy and said you'd take your mum,' said Nanny.

‘No! My mum would take herself!'

Nanny ran her hands over the nearest wall. Doors had been nailed shut when the staircase had been abandoned. Someone walking up and down here, with a keen pair of ears, could hear a lot of things …

‘What would you take out then, Walter?' she said.

‘The fire!'

Nanny stared unseeing at the wall, and then her face slowly broke into a grin.

‘You're daft, Walter Plinge,' she said.

‘Daft as a broom Mrs Ogg!' said Walter cheerfully.

But you ain't insane, she thought. You're daft but you're sane. That's what Esme would say. And there's worser things.

*  *  *

Greebo pounded along Broadway. He was suddenly not feeling very well. Muscles were twitching in odd ways. A tingling at the base of his spine indicated that his tail wanted to grow, and his ears definitely wanted to creep up the sides of his head, which is always embarrassing when it happens in company.

In this case the company was about a hundred yards behind and apparently intent on moving his ears quite a long way from their current position, embarrassment or not.

It was gaining, too. Greebo normally had a famous turn of speed, but not when his knees were trying to reverse direction every few seconds.

His normal plan when pursued was to jump on to the water-butt behind Nanny Ogg's cottage and rake the pursuer across the nose with his claws when it came around the corner. Since this would now involve a five-hundred-mile dash, an alternative had to be sought.

There was a coach waiting outside one of the houses. He lurched over to it, pulled himself up, grabbed the reins and briefly turned his attention to the driver.

‘Get orfff.'

Greebo's teeth shone in the moonlight. The coachman, with great presence of mind and urgent absence of body, somersaulted backwards into the night.

The horses reared, and tried to break into a gallop from a standing start. Animals are less capable of being fooled than are humans; they knew that
what they had behind them was a very large cat, and the fact that it was man-shaped didn't make them any happier.

The coach lumbered off. Greebo looked over his twitching shoulder at the torchlit crowd and waved a paw derisively. The effect pleased him so much that he clambered on to the roof of the swaying coach and continued to jeer.

It is a cat-like attribute to spit defiance at the enemy from a place of safety. In the circumstances it would have been better if cat-like attributes had included the ability to steer.

A wheel hit the parapet of the Brass Bridge and scraped along it, the iron rim kicking up sparks. The shock knocked Greebo from his perch in mid-gesture. He landed on his feet in the middle of the road, while the terrified horses continued on with the coach rocking dangerously from side to side.

The pursuers stopped.

‘What's he doing now?'

‘He's just standing there.'

‘There's only one of him and there's lots of us, right? We could easily overpower him.'

‘Good idea. On the count of three, we'll all rush him, right? One … two … three …' Pause. ‘You didn't run.'

‘Well, nor did you.'

‘Yes, but I was the one saying “one, two, three”.'

‘Remember what he did to Mr Pounder!'

‘Yes, well, I never liked the man all that much …'

Greebo snarled. Ticklish things were happening to his body. He threw his head back and roared.

‘Look, at worst he'd only be able to get one or two of us—'

‘Oh, that's good, is it?'