Maskerade

'How far? You don't mean...' Bucket hesitated, savouring the idea, 'you don't mean that it's just possible that you put music in and you get money out?'

André hummed a few bars. 'This could very well be the case, Mr Bucket.'

Bucket beamed. He put one arm around André and the other around Walter. 'Good!!!!!' he said. 'This calls for a very lar... for a medium‑sized mm drink .....

One by one, or in groups, the singers and dancers left the stage. And the witches and Agnes were left alone.

'Is that it?' said Agnes.

'Not quite yet,' said Granny.

Someone staggered on to the stage. A kindly hand had bandaged Enrico Basilica's head, and presumably another kindly hand had given him the plate of spaghetti he was holding. Mild concussion still seemed to have him in its grip. He blinked at the witches and then spoke like a man who'd lost his hold on immediate events and so was clinging hard to more ancient considerations.

'Summon give me some 'ghetti,' he said.

'That's nice,' said Nanny.

'Hah! 'Ghetti is fine for them as likes it... but not me! Hah! Yes!' He turned and peered muzzily at the darkness of the audience.

'You know what I'm goin' to do? You know what I'm goin' to do now? I'm sayin' goodbye to Enrico Basilica! Oh yes! He's chewed his last tentacle! I'm goin' to go right out now and have eight pints of Turbot's Really Odd. Yes! And probably a sausage in a bun! And then I'm goin' down to the music hall to hear Nellie Stamp sing "A Winkles No Use if You Don't Have a Pin"–and if I sing again here it's goin' to be under the proud old name of Henry Slugg, do you hear‑?'

There was a shriek from somewhere in the audience. 'Henry Slugg?'

'Er... yes?'

'I thought it was you! You've grown a beard and stuffed a haystack down your trousers but, I thought, under that little mask, that's my Henry, that was!'

Henry Slugg shaded his eyes from the footlights' glare.

'...Angeline?'

'Oh, no!' said Agnes, wearily. 'This sort of thing does not happen.'

'Happens in the theatre all the time,' said Nanny Ogg.

'It certainly does,' said Granny. 'It's only a mercy he doesn't have a long‑lost twin brother.'

There was the sound of much scuffling in the audience. Someone was climbing along a row, dragging someone else.

'Mother!' came a voice from the gloom. 'What do you think you are doing?'

'You just come with me, young Henry!'

'Mother, we can't go up on the stage... !'

Henry Slugg frisbeed the plate into the wings, clambered down from the stage and heaved himself over the edge of the orchestra pit, assisted by a couple of violinists.

They met at the first row of seats. Agnes could just hear their voices.

'I meant to come back. You know that!'

'I wanted to wait but, what with one thing and another... especially one thing. Come here, young Henry...'

'Mother, what is happening?'

'Son... you know I always said your father was Mr Lawsy the eel juggler?'

'Yes, of–'

'Please, both of you, come back to my dressingroom! I can see we've got such a lot to talk about.'

'Oh, yes. A lot...'

Agnes watched them go. The audience, who could spot opera even if it wasn't being sung, applauded.

'All right,' she said. 'And now is it the end?'

'Nearly,' said Granny.

'Did you do something to everyone's heads?'

'No, but I felt like smacking a few,' said Nanny.

'But no one said "thank you" or anything!'

'Often the case,' said Granny.

'Too busy thinking about the next performance,' said Nanny. 'The show must go on,' she added.

'That's... that's madness!'

'It's opera. I noticed that even Mr Bucket's caught it, too,' said Nanny. 'And that young André has been rescued from being a policeman, if I'm any judge.'

'But what about me?'

'Oh, them as makes the endings don't get them,' said Granny. She brushed an invisible speck of dust off her shoulder.

'I expect we'd better be gettin' along, Gytha,' she said, turning her back on Agnes. 'Early start tomorrow.'

Nanny walked forward, shading her eyes as she stared out into the dark maw of the auditorium.

'The audience haven't gone, you know,' she said. 'They're still sitting out there.'

Granny joined her, and peered into the gloom. 'I can't imagine why,' she said. 'He did say the opera's over...

They turned and looked at Agnes, who was standing in the centre of the stage and glowering at nothing.

'Feeling a bit angry?' said Nanny. 'Only to be expected.'

'Yes!'

'Feeling that everything's happened for other people and not for you?'

'Yes!'

'But,' said Granny Weatherwax, 'look at it like this: what's Christine got to look forward to? She'll just become a singer. Stuck in a little world. Oh, maybe she'll be good enough to get a little fame, but one day the voice'll crack and that's the end of her life. You have got a choice. You can either be on the stage, just a performer, just going through the lines... or you can be outside it, and know how the script works, where the scenery hangs, and where the trapdoors are. Isn't that better?'

'No !'