Lords and Ladies

decent rude artisans, eh? I mean. I mean. I mean. What’s it all about? I mean. I mean. I mean. Play’s all about some mechanical…rude buggers makin’ a pig’s ear out of doin’ a play about a bunch of lords and ladies—”
    A chill in the air, sharp as icicles…
    “It needs something else.”
    “Right. Right.”
    “A mythic element.”
    “Right. My point. My point. My point. Needs a plot they can go home whistlin’. Exactly.”
    “So it should be done here, in the open air. Open to the sky and the hills.”
    Jason Ogg wrinkled his brows. They were always pretty wrinkled anyway, whenever he was dealing with the complexities of the world. Only when it came to iron did he know exactly what to do. But he held up a wavering finger and tried to count his fellow thespians. Given that the jug was now empty, this was an effort. There seemed, on average, to be seven other people. But he had a vague, nagging feeling that something wasn’t right.
    “Out here,” he said, uncertainly.
    “Good idea,” said Weaver.
    “Wasn’t it your idea?” said Jason.
    “I thought you said it.”
    “I thought you did.”
    “Who cares who said it?” said Thatcher. “’S’a good idea. Seems…right.”
    “What was that about the miffic quality?”
    “What’s miffic?”
    “Something you’ve got to have,” said Weaver, theatrical expert. “Very important, your miffics.”
    “Me mam said no one was to go—” Jason began.
    “We shan’t be doing any dancing or anything,” said Carter. “I can see you don’t want people skulking around up here by ’emselves, doin’ magic. But it can’t be wrong if everyone comes here. I mean, the king and everyone. Your mam, too. Hah, I’d like to see any girls with no drawers on get past her!”
    “I don’t think it’s just—” Jason began.
    “And the other one’ll be there, too,” said Weaver.
    They considered Granny Weatherwax.
    “Cor, she frightens the life out of me, her,” said Thatcher, eventually. “The way she looks right through you. I wouldn’t say a word against her, mark you, a fine figure of a woman,” he said loudly, and then added rather more quietly, “but they do say she creeps around the place o’nights, as a hare or a bat or something. Changes her shape and all. Not that I believes a word of it,” he raised his voice, then let it sink again, “but old Weezen over in Slice told me once he shot a hare in the leg one night and next day she passed him on the lane and said ‘Ouch’ and gave him a right ding across the back of his head.”
    “My dad said,” said Weaver, “that one day he was leading our old cow to market and it took ill and fell down in the lane near her cottage and he couldn’t get it to move and he went up to her place and he knocked on the door and she opened it and before he could open his mouth she said, ‘Yer cow’s ill, Weaver’…just like that…And then she said—”
    “Was that the old brindled cow what your dad had?” said Carter.
    “No, it were my uncle had the brindled cow, we had the one with the crumpled horn,” said Weaver. “Anyway—”
    “Could have sworn it was brindled,” said Carter. “I remember my dad looking at it over the hedge one day and saying, ‘That’s fine brindling on that cow, you don’t get brindling like that these days.’ That was when you had that old field alongside Cabb’s Well.”
    “We never had that field, it was my cousin had that field,” said Weaver. “Anyway—”
    “You sure?”
    “ Anyway ,” said Weaver, ”she said, ‘You wait there, I’ll give you something for it,’ and she goes out into her back kitchen and comes back with a couple of big red pills, and she—”
    “How’d it get crumpled, then?” said Carter.
    “— and she gave him one of the pills and said, ‘What you do, you raise the old cow’s tail and shove this pill where the sun don’t shine, and in half a minute she’ll be up and running as fast as she can,’ and he thanked her, and then as he was going out of the door he said, ‘What’s the other pill for?’ and she gave him a look and said, ‘Well, you want to catch her, don’t you?’”
    “That’d be that deep valley up near Slice,” said Carter.
    They looked at him.
    “What, exactly, are you talking about?” said Weaver.
    “It’s right behind the mountain,” said Carter, nodding knowingly. “Very shady there. That’s what she meant, I expect. The place where the sun doesn’t shine. Long way to go for