Lords And Ladies

She'd approved of it. With a regular bucket of ashes and a copy of last year's Almanack on a nail and a bunch-of-grapes cut out on the door it functioned quite effectively. About once every few months she'd have to dig a big hole and get someone to help her move the shed itself.

The garderobe was this: a sort of small roofed-in room inside the wall, with a wooden seat positioned over a large square hole that went down all the way to the foot of the castle wall far below, where there was an opening from which biodegradability took place once a week by means of an organodynamic process known as Shawn Ogg and his wheelbarrow. That much Magrat understood. It kind of fitted in with the whole idea of royalty and commonality. What shocked her were the hooks.

They were for storing clothes in the garderobe. Millie had explained that the more expensive furs and things were hung there. Moths were kept away by the draught from the hole and . . . the smell[23].

Magrat had put her foot down about that, at least.

Now she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.

Of course she wanted to marry Verence, even with his weak chin and slightly runny eyes. In the pit of the night Magrat knew that she was in no position to be choosy, and getting a king in the circumstances was a stroke of luck.

It was just that she had preferred him when he'd been a Fool. There's something about a man who tinkles gently as he moves.

It was just that she could see a future of bad tapestry and sitting looking wistfully out of the window.

It was just that she was fed up with books of etiquette and lineage and Twurp's Peerage

of the Fifteen Mountains and the Sto Plains.

You had to know this kind of thing, to be a queen. There were books full of the stuff in the Long Gallery, and she hadn't even explored the far end. How to address the third cousin of an earl. What the pictures on shields meant, all those lions passant and regardant. And the clothes weren't getting any better. Magrat had drawn the line at a wimple, and she wasn't at all happy about the big pointy hat with the scarf dangling from it. It probably looked beautiful on the Lady of Shallot, but on Magrat it looked as though someone had dropped a big ice cream on her neck.

Nanny Ogg sat in front of her fire in her dressing gown, smoking her pipe and idly cutting her toenails. There was the occasional ping and ricochet from distant parts of the room, and a small tinkle as an oil lamp was smashed.

Granny Weatherwax lay on her bed, still and cold. In her blue-veined hands, the words: I AM NOT DEAD . . .

Her mind drifted across the forest, searching, searching. . .

The trouble was, she could not go where there were no eyes to see or ears to hear.

So she never noticed the hollow near the stones, where eight men slept.

And dreamed . . .

Lancre is cut off from the rest of the lands of mankind by a bridge over Lancre Gorge, above the shallow but poisonously fast and treacherous Lancre River[24].

The coach pulled up at the far end.

There was a badly painted red, black, and white post across the road.

The coachman sounded his horn.

"What's up?" said Ridcully, leaning out of the window.

"Troll bridge."

"Whoops."

After a while there was a booming sound under the bridge, and a troll clambered over the parapet. It was quite overdressed, for a troll. In addition to the statutory loincloth, it was wearing a helmet. Admittedly it had been designed for a human head, and was attached to the much larger troll head by string, but there probably wasn't a better word than "wearing."

"What's up?" said the Bursar, waking up.

"There's a troll on the bridge," said Ridcully, "but it's underneath a helmet, so it's probably official and will get into serious trouble if it eats people[25]. Nothing to worry about."

The Bursar giggled, because he was on the upcurve of whatever switchback his mind was currently riding.

The troll appeared at the coach window.

"Afternoon, your lordships," it said. "Customs inspection."

"I don't think we have any," babbled the Bursar happily. "I mean, we used to have a tradition of rolling boiled eggs downhill on Soul Cake Tuesday, but-"

"I means," said the troll, "do you have any beer, spirits, wines, liquors, hallucinogenic herbage, or books of a lewd or licentious nature?"

Ridcully pulled the Bursar back from the window.

"No," he said.

"No?"

"No."

"Sure?"

"Yes."

"Would you like some?"

"We haven't even got," said the Bursar, despite Ridcully's efforts to sit on his head, "any billygoats."

There are some people that would whistle "Yankee Doodle" in a crowded bar in Atlanta.

Even these people would consider it tactless to mention the word "billygoat" to a troll.

The troll's expression changed very slowly, like a glacier eroding half a mountain. Ponder tried to get under the seat.

"So we'll just trit-trot along, shall we?" said the Bursar, his voice by now slightly muffled.

"He doesn't mean it," said the Archchancellor quickly. "It's the dried frog talking."