Maskerade (Discworld #18) 8

'Yes, I think you might be surprised,' said Granny. '-there's one with lots of sailors dancin' around singin' about how there's no women-'

'This is Walter, isn't it?'

'-and then some bloke called Les who's miserable all the time-'

'Oh, this is Walter,' said Granny. 'The same person.

'-and there's one, hah, with all cats all leapin' around all singin', that was fun,' Nanny burbled. 'Can't imagine how he thought up that one-' Bucket scratched his chin. He was feeling light headed enough as it was. 'And he's trustworthy,' said Granny. 'And he's honest. And he knows all about the Opera House, as I said. And. . . where everything is. . .' That was enough for Mr Bucket. 'Want to be director of music, Walter?' he said. 'Thank you, Mr Bucket,' said Walter Plinge. 'I should like that very much. But what about cleaning the privies?'

'Sorry?'

'I won't have to stop doing them, will I? I've just got them working right.'

'Oh? Right. Really?' Mr Bucket's eyes crossed for a moment. 'Well, fine. You can sing while you're doing it, if you like,' he added generously. 'And I won't even cut your pay! I'll. . . I'll raise it! Six. . . no, seven shiny dollars!' Walter rubbed his face thoughtfully. 'Mr Bucket. . .'

'Yes, Walter?'

'I think. . . you paid Mr Salzella forty shiny dollars. . .' Bucket turned to Granny. 'Is he some kind of monster?'

'You just listen to the stuff he's been writin',' said Nanny. 'Amazin' songs, not even in foreign. Will you just look at this stuff. . .'scuse me. . .' She turned her back on the audience- -twingtwangtwong- -and twirled round again with a wad of music paper in her hands. 'I know good music when I sees it,' she said, handing it to Bucket and pointing excitedly at extracts. 'It's got blobs and curly bits all over it, see?'

'You have been writing this music?' said Bucket to Walter. 'Which is unaccountably warm?'

'Indeed, Mr Bucket.'

'In my time?'

'There's a lovely song here,' said Nanny, ' “Don't cry for me, Genua”. It's very sad. That reminds me, I'd better go and see if Mrs Plinge has come rou. . . has woken up. I may have overdone it a bit on the stumble.' She ambled off, twitching at bits of her costume, and nudged a fascinated ballerina. 'This balleting doesn't half make you sweat, don't you find?'

'Excuse me, there's something I didn't quite believe,' said André. He took Salzella's sword and tested the blade carefully. 'Ow!' he shouted. 'Sharp, is it?' said Agnes. 'Yes!' André sucked his thumb. 'She caught it in her hand.'

'She's a witch,' said Agnes. 'But it was steel! I thought no one could magic steel! Everyone knows that.'

'I wouldn't be too impressed if I was you,' said Agnes sourly. 'It was probably just some kind of trick. . .' André turned to Granny. 'Your hand isn't even scratched! How did. . . you. . .' Her stare held him in its sapphire vice for a moment. When he turned away he looked vaguely puzzled, like a man who can't remember where he's just put something down. 'I hope he didn't hurt Christine,' he mumbled. 'Why isn't anyone seeing to her?'

'Probably because she makes sure she screams and faints before anything happens,' said Perdita, through Agnes.

André set off across the stage. Agnes trailed after him. A couple of dancers were kneeling down next to Christine. 'It'd be terrible if anything happened to her,' said André. 'Oh. . . yes.'

'Everyone says she's showing such promise. . .' Walter stepped up beside him. 'Yes. We should get her somewhere,' he said. His voice was clipped and precise. Agnes felt the bottom start to drop out of her world. 'Yes, but. . . you know it was me doing the singing.'

'Oh, yes. . . yes, of course. . .' said André, awkwardly. 'But. . .well. . . this is opera. . . you know. . .' Walter took her hand. 'But it was me you taught!' she said desperately. 'Then you were very good,' said Walter. 'I suspect she will never be quite that good, even with many months of my tuition. But, Perdita, have you ever heard of the words “star quality”?'

'Is it the same as talent?' snapped Agnes. 'It is rarer.' She stared at him. His face, however it was controlled now, was quite handsome in the glare of the footlights. She pulled her hand free. 'I liked you better when you were Walter Plinge,' she said. Agnes turned away, and felt Granny Weatherwax's gaze on her. She was sure it was a mocking gaze. 'Er. . . we ought to get Christine into Mr Bucket's office,' André said. This seemed to break some sort of spell. 'Yes, indeed!!!' said Bucket. 'And we can't leave Mr Salzella corpsing on stage, either. You two, you'd better take him backstage. The rest of you. . . well, it was nearly over anyway. . . er. . . that's it. The. . . opera is over. . .'

'Walter Plinge!' Nanny Ogg entered, supporting Mrs Plinge. Walter's mother fixed him with a beady gaze. 'Have you been a bad boy?' Mr Bucket walked over to her and patted her hand. 'I think you'd better come along to my office, too,' he said. He handed the sheaf of music to André, who opened it at random. André gave it a glance, and then stared. 'Hey. . . this is good,' he said. 'Is it?' André looked at another page. 'Good heavens!'

'What? What?' said Bucket. 'I've just never. . . I mean, even I can see. . . tum-ti TUM tum-tum. . .yes. . . Mr Bucket, you do know this isn't opera? There's music and. . . yes. . . dancing and singing all right, but it's not opera. Not opera at all. A long way from opera.'

'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 dressing room! 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!' The infuriating thing about Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax, Agnes thought later, was the way they sometimes acted in tandem, without exchanging a word. Of course, there were plenty of other things-the way they never thought that meddling was meddling if they did it; the way they automatically assumed that everyone else's business was their own; the way they went through life in a straight line; the way, in fact, that they arrived in any situation and immediately started to change it. Compared to that, acting on unspoken agreement was a mere minor annoyance, but it was here and up close. They walked towards her, and each laid a hand on her shoulder. 'Feeling angry?' said Granny. 'Yes!'

'I should let it out then, if I was you,' said Nanny. Agnes shut her eyes, clenched her fists, opened her mouth and screamed. It started low. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. The prisms on the chandelier chimed gently as they shook. It rose, passing quickly through the mysterious pitch at fourteen cycles per second where the human spirit begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable about the universe and the place in it of the bowels. Small items around the Opera House vibrated off shelves and smashed on the floor. The note climbed, rang like a bell, climbed again. In the Pit, all the violin strings snapped, one by one. As the tone rose, the crystal prisms shook in the chandelier. In the bar, champagne corks fired a salvo. Ice jingled and shattered in its bucket. A line of wine-glasses joined in the chorus, blurred around the rims, and then exploded like hazardous thistledown with attitude. There were harmonics and echoes that caused strange effects. In the dressing-rooms the No. 3 greasepaint melted. Mirrors cracked, filling the ballet school with a million fractured images.