Maskerade Read Free

the young men of Lancre knew it too. Nanny wandered the summer hayfields regularly, and had a sharp if compassionate eye and damn good over-the-horizon hearing. Violet Frottidge was walking out with young Deviousness Carter, or at least doing something within ninety degrees of walking out. Bonnie Quarney had been gathering nuts in May with William Simple, and it was only because she’d thought ahead and taken a little advice from Nanny that she wouldn’t be bearing fruit in February. And pretty soon now young Mildred Tinker’s mother would have a quiet word with Mildred Tinker’s father, and he’d have a word with his friend Thatcher and he’d have a word with his son Hob, and then there’d be a wedding, all done in a properly civilized way except for maybe a black eye or two. * No doubt about it, thought Nanny with a misty-eyed smile: innocence, in a hot Lancre summer, was that state in which innocence is lost.
    And then a name rose out of the throng. Oh, yes. Her . Why hadn’t she thought of her ? But you didn’t, of course. Whenever you thought about the young girls of Lancre, you didn’t remember her. And then you said, “Oh, yes, her too, of course. O’ course, she’s got a wonderful personality. And good hair, of course.”
    She was bright, and talented. In many ways. Her voice, for one thing. That was her power, finding its way out. And of course she also had a wonderful personality, so there’d be not much chance of her being…disqualified…
    Well, that was settled, then. Another witch to bully and impress would set Granny up a treat, and Agnes would be bound to thank her eventually.
    Nanny Ogg was relieved. You needed at least three witches for a coven. Two witches was just an argument.
    She opened the door of her cottage and climbed the stairs to bed.
    Her cat, the tom Greebo, was spread out on the eiderdown like a puddle of gray fur. He didn’t even awake as Nanny lifted him up bodily so that, nightdress-clad, she could slide between the sheets.
    Just to keep bad dreams at bay, she took a swig out of a bottle that smelled of apples and happy brain-death. Then she pummeled her pillow, thought “Her…yes,” and drifted off to sleep.
    Presently Greebo awoke, stretched, yawned and hopped silently to the floor. Then the most vicious and cunning a pile of fur that ever had the intelligence to sit on a bird table with its mouth open and a piece of toast balanced on its nose vanished through the open window.
    A few minutes later, the cockerel in the garden next door stuck up his head to greet the bright new day and died instantly in mid- “doodle-doo.”

    There was a huge darkness in front of Agnes while, at the same time, she was half-blinded by the light. Just below the edge of the stage, giant flat candles floated in a long trough of water, producing a strong yellow glare quite unlike the oil lamps of home. Beyond the light, the auditorium waited like the mouth of a very big and extremely hungry animal.
    From somewhere on the far side of the lights a voice said, “When you’re ready, miss.”
    It wasn’t a particularly unfriendly voice. It just wanted her to get on with it, sing her piece, and go.
    “I’ve, er, got this song, it’s a—”
    “You’ve given your music to Miss Proudlet?”
    “Er, there isn’t an accompaniment actually, it—”
    “Oh, it’s a folk song, is it?”
    There was a whispering in the darkness, and someone laughed quietly.
    “Off you go then…Perdita, right?”
    Agnes launched into the Hedgehog Song, and knew by about word seven that it had been the wrong choice. You needed a tavern, with people leering and thumping their mugs on the table. This big brilliant emptiness just sucked at it and made her voice hesitant and shrill.
    She stopped at the end of verse three. She could feel the blush starting somewhere around her knees. It’d take some time to get to her face, because it had a lot of skin to cover, but by then it’d be strawberry pink.
    She could hear