Maskerade (7 page)

‘Oh,
no
!' screamed someone.

‘It's the Ghost!!' shrieked Christine, automatically.

‘Er. It's the young man behind the organ,' said Agnes. ‘Sorry.'

‘Observant as well as level-headed,' said Salzella. ‘Whereas I can see that you, Christine, will fit right in here. What's the matter, André?'

A fair-haired young man peered around the organ pipes.

‘Someone's been smashing things, Mr Salzella,' he said mournfully. ‘The pallet springs and the back-falls and everything. Completely ruined. I'm sure I won't be able to get a tune out of it. And it's
priceless
.'

Salzella sighed. ‘All right. I'll tell
Mister
Bucket,' he said. ‘Thank you, everyone.'

He gave Agnes a gloomy nod, and strode off.

*    *    *

‘You shouldn't ort to do that to people,' said Nanny Ogg in a vague sort of way, as the coach began to get up speed.

She looked around with a wide, friendly grin at the now rather dishevelled occupants of the coach.

‘Morning,' she said, delving into the sack. ‘I'm Gytha Ogg, I've got fifteen children, this is my friend Esme Weatherwax, we're going to Ankh-Morpork, would anyone like an egg sandwich? I've brung plenty. The cat's been sleepin' on them but they're fine, look, they bend back all right. No? Please yourself, I'm sure. Let's see what else we've got … ah, has anybody got an opener for a bottle of beer?'

A man in the corner indicated that he might have such a thing.

‘Fine,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘Anyone got something to drink a bottle of beer out of?'

Another man nodded hopefully.

‘Good,' said Nanny Ogg. ‘Now, has anybody got a bottle of beer?'

Granny, for once not the centre of attention as all horrified eyes were on Nanny and her sack, surveyed the other occupants of the coach.

The express stage went right over the Ramtops and all the way through the patchwork of little countries beyond. If it cost forty dollars just from Lancre, then it must have cost these people a lot more. What sort of folk spent the best part of two months' wages just to travel fast and uncomfortably?

The thin man who sat clutching his bag was probably a spy, she decided. The fat man who'd volunteered the glass looked as if he sold things; he
had the unpleasant complexion of someone who'd hit too many bottles but missed too many meals.

They were huddled together on their seat because the rest of it was occupied by a man of almost wizardly proportions. He didn't appear to have woken up when the coach stopped. There was a handkerchief over his face. He was snoring with the regularity of a geyser, and looked as though the only worries he might have in the world were a tendency for small objects to gravitate towards him and the occasional tide.

Nanny Ogg continued to rummage around in her bag and, as was the case when she was preoccupied, her mouth had wired itself to her eyeballs without her brain intervening.

She was used to travelling by broomstick. Long-distance ground travel was a novelty to her, so she'd prepared with some care.

‘… lessee now … book of puzzles for long journeys … cushion … foot powder … mosquito trap … phrase book … bag to be sick into … oh dear …'

The audience, which against all probability had managed to squeeze itself further away from Nanny during the litany, waited with horrified interest.

‘What?' said Granny.

‘How often d'you reckon this coach stops?'

‘What's the matter?'

‘I should've gone before we left. Sorry. It's the jolting. Anyone know if there's a privy on this thing?' she added brightly.

‘Er,' said the probable spy, ‘we generally wait
until the next stop, or—' He stopped. He had been about to add ‘there's always the window', which was a manly option on the bumpier rural stretches, but he stopped himself in the horrible apprehension that this ghastly old woman might seriously consider the possibility.

‘There's Ohulan just a bit further on the road,' said Granny, who was trying to doze. ‘You just wait.'

‘This coach doesn't stop at Ohulan,' said the spy helpfully.

Granny Weatherwax raised her head.

‘Up until now, that is,' said the spy.

Mr Bucket was sitting in his office trying to make sense of the Opera House's books.

They didn't make
any
kind of sense. He reckoned he was as good as the next man at reading a balance-sheet, but these were to book-keeping what grit was to clockwork.

Seldom Bucket had always enjoyed opera. He didn't understand it and never had, but he didn't understand the ocean either and he enjoyed that, too. He'd looked upon the purchase as, well, something to do, a sort of working retirement. The offer had been too good to pass up. Things had been getting pretty tough in the wholesale cheese-and-milk-derivatives business, and he'd been looking forward to the quieter climes of the world of art.

The previous owners had put on some good operas. It was only a shame that their genius hadn't run to book-keeping as well. Money seemed to have been taken out of the accounts when anyone needed
it. The financial-record system largely consisted of notes on torn bits of paper saying: ‘I've taken $30 to pay Q. See you Monday. R.' Who was R? Who was Q? What was the money for? You wouldn't get away with this sort of thing in the world of cheese.

He looked up as the door opened.

‘Ah, Salzella,' he said. ‘Thank you for coming. You don't know who Q is, by any chance?'

‘No, Mr Bucket.'

‘Or R?'

‘I'm afraid not.' Salzella pulled up a chair.

‘It's taken me all morning, but I've worked out we pay more than fifteen hundred dollars a year for ballet shoes,' said Bucket, waving a piece of paper in the air.

Salzella nodded. ‘Yes, they do rather go through them at the toes.'

‘I mean, it's ridiculous! I've still got a pair of boots belonging to my father!'

‘But ballet shoes, sir, are rather more like foot gloves,' Salzella explained.

‘You're telling me! They cost seven dollars a pair and they last hardly any time at all! A few performances! There must be
some
way we can make a saving …?'

Salzella gave his new employer a long, cool stare. ‘Possibly we could ask the girls to spend more time in the air?' he said. ‘A few extra
grands jetés
?'

Bucket looked puzzled. ‘Would that work?' he said suspiciously.

‘Well, their feet wouldn't be on the ground for so long, would they?' said Salzella, in the tones of one
who knows for a fact that he's much more intelligent than anyone else in the room.

‘Good point. Good point. Have a word with the ballet mistress, will you?'

‘Of course. I am sure she will welcome the suggestion. You may well have halved costs at a stroke.'

Bucket beamed.

‘Which is perhaps just as well,' said Salzella. ‘There is, in fact, another matter that I've come to see you about …'

‘Yes?'

‘It is to do with the organ we had.'

‘Had? What do you mean,
had
?' said Bucket, adding, ‘You're going to tell me something expensive, are you? What have we got now?'

‘A lot of pipes and some keyboards,' said Salzella. ‘Everything else has been smashed.'

‘Smashed? Who by?'

Salzella leaned back. He was not a man to whom amusement came easily, but he realized that he was rather enjoying this.

‘Tell me,' he said, ‘when Mr Pnigeus and Mr Cavaille sold you this Opera House, did they mention anything … supernatural?'

Bucket scratched his head. ‘Well … yes. After I'd signed and paid. It was a bit of a joke. They said: “Oh, and by the way, people say there's some man in evening dress who haunts the place, haha, ridiculous, isn't it, these theatrical people, like children really, haha, but you may find it keeps them happy if you always keep Box Eight free on first nights, haha.” I remember that quite well. Handing over thirty
thousand dollars concentrates the memory a bit. And then they rode off. Quite a fast carriage, now I come to think about it.'

‘Ah,' said Salzella, and he almost smiled. ‘Well, now that the ink is dry, I wonder if I might fill you in on the fine detail …'

Birds sang. The wind rattled the dried seed-heads of moorland flowers.

Granny Weatherwax poked in the ditches to see if there were any interesting herbs hereabouts.

High over the hills, a buzzard screamed and wheeled.

The coach stood by the side of the road, despite the fact that it should have been speeding along at least twenty miles away.

At last Granny grew bored, and sidled towards a clump of gorse bushes.

‘How're you doing, Gytha?'

‘Fine, fine,' said a muffled voice.

‘Only I reckon the coach driver is getting a bit impatient.'

‘You can't hurry Nature,' said Nanny Ogg.

‘Well, don't blame me.
You
was the one who said it was too draughty on the broomsticks.'

‘You make yourself useful, Esme Weatherwax,' said the voice from the bushes, ‘by obligin' me and findin' any dock or burdock plants that might happen to be around out there, thank you very much.'

‘Herbs? What're you plannin' with them?'

‘I'm plannin' to say, “Thank goodness, big leaves, just what I need.”'

*    *    *

Some distance from the bushes where Nanny Ogg was communing with Nature there was, placid under the autumn sky, a lake.

In the reeds, a swan was dying. Or was due to die.

There was, however, an unforeseen snag.

Death sat down on the bank.

NOW LOOK
, he said,
I KNOW HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO GO. SWANS SING JUST ONCE, BEAUTIFULLY, BEFORE THEY DIE. THAT'S WHERE THE WORD ‘SWAN-SONG' ORIGINATES. IT IS VERY MOVING. NOW, LET US TRY THIS AGAIN
…

He produced a tuning fork from the shadowy recesses of his robe and twanged it on the side of his scythe.

THERE'S YOUR NOTE
…

‘Uh-uh,' said the swan, shaking its head.

WHY MAKE IT DIFFICULT?

‘I like it here,' said the swan.

THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

‘Did you know I can break a man's arm with a blow of my wing?'

HOW ABOUT IF I GET YOU STARTED? DO YOU KNOW ‘MOONLIGHT BAY'?

‘That's no more than a barbershop ditty! I happen to be a swan!'

‘
LITTLE BROWN JUG
'? Death cleared his throat,
HA HA HA, HEE HEE HEE, LITTLE
—

‘That's a song?' The swan hissed angrily and swayed from one crabbed foot to the other. ‘I don't know who you are, sirrah, but where
I
come from we've got better taste in music.'

REALLY? WOULD YOU CARE TO SHOW ME AN EXAMPLE?

‘Uh-uh!'

DAMN.

‘Thought you'd got me there, didn't you,' said the swan. ‘Thought you'd tricked me, eh? Thought I might unthinkingly give you a couple of bars of the Pedlar's Song from
Lohenshaak
, eh?'

I DON'T KNOW THAT ONE.

The swan took a deep, laboured breath.

‘That's the one that goes
“Schneide meinen eigenen Hals—”'

THANK
YOU
, said Death. The scythe moved.

‘Bugger!'

A moment later the swan stepped out of its body and ruffled fresh but slightly transparent wings.

‘Now what?' it said.

THAT'S UP TO YOU. IT'S ALWAYS UP TO YOU.

Mr Bucket leaned back in his creaky leather chair with his eyes shut until his director of music had finished.

‘So,' Bucket said. ‘Let me see if I've got this right. There's this Ghost. Every time anyone loses a hammer in this place, it's been stolen by the Ghost. Every time someone cracks a note, it's because of the Ghost. But
also
, every time someone
finds
a lost object, it's because of the Ghost. Every time someone has a very good scene, it must be because of the Ghost. He sort of comes with the building, like the rats. Every so often someone sees him, but not for long because he comes and goes like a … well, a
Ghost. Apparently we let him use Box Eight for
free
on every first-night performance. And you say people
like
him?'

‘“Like” isn't quite the right word,' said Salzella. ‘It would be more correct to say that … well, it's pure superstition, of course, but they think he's lucky.
Thought
he was, anyway.'

And you wouldn't understand a thing about that, would you, you coarse little cheesemonger
, he added to himself.
Cheese is cheese. Milk goes rotten naturally. You don't have to make it happen by having several hundred people wound up until their nerves go twang …

‘Lucky,' said Bucket flatly.

‘Luck is very important,' said Salzella, in a voice in which pained patience floated like ice cubes. ‘I imagine that temperament is not an important factor in the cheese business?'

‘We rely on rennet,' said Bucket.

Salzella sighed. ‘Anyway, the company feel that the Ghost is … lucky. He used to send people little notes of encouragement. After a really good performance, sopranos would find a box of chocolates in their dressing-room, that sort of thing. And dead flowers, for some reason.'

‘Dead
flowers?'

‘Well, not flowers at all, as such. Just a bouquet of dead rose-stems with no roses on them. It's something of a trademark of his. It's considered lucky.'

‘Dead flowers are lucky?'

‘Possibly. Live flowers, certainly, are terribly bad luck on stage. Some singers won't even have them in
their dressing-room. So … dead flowers are safe, you might say. Odd, but safe. And it didn't worry people because everyone thought the Ghost was on their side. At least, they did. Until about six months ago.'