Lords and Ladies

breastplate.
    “See?”
    Nanny Ogg read:
    “Dear sire, This is to inform youe that Magrate Garlick will bee retouning to Lancre on or aboute Blind Pig Tuesday. Shee is a Wet Hen but shee is clean and has got Good Teeth. If you wishes to marrie her, then starte arranging matters without delae, because if you just proposes and similar she will lede you a Dance because there is noone like Magrat for getting in the way of her own life. She does not Knoe her own Mind. You aere Kinge and you can doe what you like. You muste present her with a Fate Accompli. PS. I hear there is talk aboute making witches pay tax, no kinges of Lancre has tried this for many a Year, you could profit from their example. Yrs. in good health, at the moment. A FRIEND (MSS).”
    The ticking of the clock stitched the blanket of silence.
    Nanny Ogg turned to look at it.
    “She arranged it all!” said Magrat. “You know what Verence is like. I mean, she hardly disguised who she was, did she? And I got back and it was all arranged —”
    “What would you have done if nothing had been arranged?” said Nanny.
    Magrat looked momentarily taken aback.
    “Well, I would…I mean, if he had…I’d—”
    “You’d be getting married today, would you?” said Nanny, but in a distant voice, as if she was thinking about something else.
    “Well, that depends on—”
    “You want to, don’t you?”
    “Well, yes, of course, but—”
    “That’s nice, then,” said Nanny, in what Magrat thought of as her nursery voice.
    “Yes, but she pushed me on one side and shut me up in the castle and I got so wound up—”
    “You were so angry that you actually stood up to the Queen. You actually laid hands on her,” said Nanny. “Well done. The old Magrat wouldn’t have done that, would she? Esme could always see the real thing. Now nip out of the back door and look at the log pile, there’s a love.”
    “But I hated her and hated her and now she’s dead!”
    “Yes, dear. Now go and tell Nanny about the log pile.”
    Magrat opened her mouth to frame the words “I happen to be very nearly queen” but decided not to. Instead she graciously went outside and looked at the log pile.
    “It’s quite high,” she said, coming back and blowing her nose. “Looks like it’s just been stacked.”
    “And she wound up the clock yesterday,” said Nanny. “And the tea caddy’s half full, I just looked.”
    “Well?”
    “She wasn’t sure,” said Nanny. “Hmm.”
    She opened the envelope addressed to her. It was larger and flatter than the one holding the will, and contained a single piece of card.
    Nanny read it, and let it drop on to the table.
    “Come on,” she said. “We ain’t got much time!”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “And bring the sugar bowl!”
    Nanny wrenched open the door and hurried toward her broomstick.
    “Come on!”
    Magrat picked up the card. The writing was familiar. She’d seen it several times before, when calling on Granny Weatherwax unexpectedly.
    It said: I ATE’NT DEAD.

    “Halt! Who goes there?”
    “What’re you doing on guard with your arm in a sling, Shawn?”
    “Duty calls, Mum.”
    “Well, let us in right now.”
    “Are you Friend or Foe, Mum?”
    “Shawn, this is almost-Queen Magrat here with me, all right?”
    “Yes, but you’ve got to—”
    “Right now!”
    “Oooaaaww, Mum!”

    Magrat tried to keep up with Nanny as she scurried through the castle.
    “The wizard was right. She was dead, you know. I don’t blame you for hoping, but I can tell when people are dead.”
    “No, you can’t. I remember a few years ago you came running down to my house in tears and it turned out she was just off Borrowing. That’s when she started using the sign.”
    “But—”
    “She wasn’t sure what was going to happen,” said Nanny. “That’s good enough for me.”
    “Nanny—”
    “You never know until you look,” said Nanny Ogg, expounding her own Uncertainty Principle.
    Nanny kicked open the doors to the Great Hall.
    “What’s all this?”
    Ridcully got up from his chair, looking embarrassed.
    “Well, it didn’t seem right to leave her all alone—”
    “Oh dear, oh dear,” said Nanny, gazing at the solemn tableau.
    “Candles and lilies. I bet you pinched ’em yourself, out of the garden. And then you all shut her away indoors like this.”
    “Well—”
    “And no one even thought to leave a damn window open! Can’t you hear them?”
    “Hear what?”
    Nanny looked around hurriedly and