Feet of Clay

'Did I? Did I? Oh, yes. Nobby, how many grandmothers' funerals have you really been to?'

'Er... three...' said Nobby, uncomfortably.

Three?'

'It turned out Nanny Nobbs weren't quite dead the first time.'

'So why have you taken all this time off?'

'Don't like to say, sir...'

'Why not?'

'You're gonna go spare, sir.'

'Spare?'

'You know, sir ... throw a wobbler.'

'I might, Nobby.' Vimes sighed. 'But it'll be nothing to what'll get heaved if you don't tell me...'

'Thing is, it's the tricentre - tricera - this three-hundred-year celebration thing next year, Mr Vimes...'

'Yes?'

Nobby licked his lips. 'I dint like to ask for time offspecial. Fred said you were a bit sensitive about it all. But... you know I'm in the Peeled Nuts, sir...'

Vimes nodded. 'Those clowns who dress up and pretend to fight old battles with blunt swords,' he said.

'The Ankh-Morpork Historical Re-creation Society, sir,' said Nobby, a shade reproachfully.

'That's what I said.'

'Well... we're going to recreate the Battle of Ankh-Morpork for the celebrations, see. That means extra practice.'

'It all begins to make sense,' said Vimes, nodding wearily. 'You've been marching up and down with your tin pike, eh? In my time?'

'Er ... not exactly, Mr Vimes . , . er... I've been riding up and down on my white horse, to tell the truth

'Oh? Playing at being a general, eh?'

'Er ... a bit more'n a general, sir...'

'Goon.'

Nobby's adam's apple bobbed nervously. 'Er... I'm going to be King Lorenzo, sir. Er ... you know... the last king, the one your... er...'

The air froze.

'You ... are going to be...' Vimes began, unpeeling each word like a sullen grape of wrath.

'I said you'd go spare,' said Nobby. 'Fred Colon said you'd go spare, too.'

'Why are you—?'

'We drew lots, sir.'

'And you lost?'

Nobby squirmed. Er ... not exactly lost, sir. Not precisely lost. More sort of won, sir. Everyone wanted to play him. I mean, you get a horse and a good costume and everything, sir. And he was a king, when all's said and done, sir.'

'The man was a vicious monster!'

'Well, it was all a long time ago, sir,' said Nobby anxiously.

Vimes calmed down a little. 'And who drew the straw to play Stoneface Vimes?'

'Er...er...'

'Nobby!'

Nobby hung his head. 'No one, sir. No one wanted to play him, sir.' The little corporal swallowed, and then plunged onwards with the air of a man determined to get it all over with. 'So we're making a man out of straw, sir, so he'll burn nicely when we throw him on the bonfire in the evening. There's going to be fireworks, sir,' he added, with dreadful certainty.

Vimes's face shut down. Nobby preferred it when people shouted. He had been shouted at for most of his life. He could handle shouting.

'No one wanted to be Stoneface Vimes,' Vimes said coldly.

'On account of him being on the losing side, sir.'

'Losing? Vimes's Ironheads won. He ruled the city for six months.'

Nobby squirmed again. 'Yeah, but... everyone in the Society says he didn't ought to of, sir. They said it was just a fluke, sir. After all, he was outnumbered ten to one, and he had warts, sir. And he was a bit of a bastard, sir, when all's said and done. He did chop off a king's head, sir. You got to be a bit of a nasty type to do that, sir. Saving your presence, Mr Vimes.'

Vimes shook his head. What did it matter, anyway? (But it did matter, somewhere.) It had all been a long time ago. It didn't matter what a bunch of deranged romantics thought. Facts were facts.

'All right, I understand,' he said. 'It's almost funny, really. Because there's something else I've got to tell you, Nobby.'

'Yessir?' said Nobby, looking relieved.

'Do you remember your father?'

Nobby looked about to panic again. 'What kind of question is that to suddenly ask anybody, sir?'

'Purely a social enquiry.'

'Old Sconner, sir? Not much, sir. Never used to see him much except when the milit'ry police used to come for to drag him outa the attic.'

'Do you know much about your, er, antecedents?'

'That is a lie, sir. I haven't got no antecedents, sir, no matter what you might have been tole.'

'Oh. Good. Er ... you don't actually know what antecedents means, do you, Nobby?'

Nobby shifted uneasily. He didn't like being questioned by policemen, especially since he was one. 'Not in so many words, sir.'

'You never got told anything about your forebears?' Another worried expression crossed Nobby's face, so Vimes quickly added: 'Your ancestors?'

'Only old Sconner, sir. Sir ... if all this is working up to asking about them sacks of vegetables which went missing from the shop in Treacle Mine Road, I was not anywhere near the—'

Vimes waved a hand vaguely. 'He didn't... leave you anything? Or anything?'

'Coupla scars, sir. And this trick elbow of mine. It aches sometimes, when the weather changes. I always remembers ole Sconner when the wind blows from the Hub.'

'Ah, right—'