Lords and Ladies

if it was flowing in the direction of the dwarfs, and people would Be Breaking People’s Arms Off because of what, more or less, Their Ancestors Said About Our Sharon.
    And then there’s other things…
    “How’s the girl they brought in?”
    “I’ve told Millie to keep an eye on her. What are they doing, those two?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You’re king, aren’t you?”
    Verence shifted uneasily.
    “But they’re witches. I don’t like to ask them questions.”
    “Why not?”
    “They might give me answers. And then what would I do?”
    “What did Granny want to talk to you about?”
    “Oh…you know…things…”
    “It wasn’t about…sex, was it?”
    Verence suddenly looked like a man who had been expecting a frontal attack and suddenly finds nasty things happening behind him.
    “No! Why?”
    “Nanny was trying to give me motherly advice. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. Honestly, they both treat me as if I’m a big child.”
    “Oh, no. Nothing like that.”
    They sat on either side of the huge fireplace, both crimson with embarrassment.
    Then Magrat said: “Er…you did send off for that book, did you? You know…the one with the woodcuts?”
    “Oh, yes. Yes, I did.”
    “It ought to have arrived by now.”
    “Well, we only get a mail coach once a week. I expect it’ll come tomorrow. I’m fed up with running down there every week in case Shawn gets there first.”
    “You are king. You could tell him not to.”
    “Don’t like to, really. He’s so keen.”
    A large log crackled into two across the iron dogs.
    “Can you really get books about…that?”
    “You can get books about anything .”
    They both stared at the fire. Verence thought: she doesn’t like being a queen, I can see that, but that’s what you are when you marry a king, all the books say so…
    And Magrat thought: he was much nicer when he was a man with silver bells on his hat and slept every night on the floor in front of his master’s door. I could talk to him then…
    Verence clapped his hands together.
    “Well, that’s about it, then. Busy day tomorrow, what with all the guests coming and everything.”
    “Yes. It’s going to be a long day.”
    “Very nearly the longest day. Haha.”
    “Yes.”
    “I expect they’ve put warming pans in our beds.”
    “Has Shawn got the hang of it now?”
    “I hope so. I can’t afford any more mattresses.”
    It was a great hall. Shadows piled up in the corners, clustered at either end.
    “I suppose,” said Magrat, very slowly, as they stared at the fire, “they haven’t really had many books here in Lancre. Up until now.”
    “Literacy is a great thing.”
    “They got along without them, I suppose.”
    “Yes, but not properly. Their husbandry is really very primitive.”
    Magrat looked at the fire. Their wifery wasn’t up to much either, she thought.
    “So we’d better be off to bed, then, do you think?”
    “I suppose so.”
    Verence took down two silver candlesticks, and lit the candles with a taper. He handed one to Magrat.
    “Goodnight, then.”
    “Goodnight.”
    They kissed, and turned away, and headed for their own rooms.
    The sheets on Magrat’s bed were just beginning to turn brown. She pulled out the warming pan and dropped it out of the window.
    She glared at the garderobe.
    Magrat was probably the only person in Lancre who worried about things being biodegradable. Everyone else just hoped things would last and knew that damn near everything went rotten if you left it long enough.
    At home—correction, at the cottage where she used to live —there had been a privy at the bottom of the garden.
    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 cutout 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 organo-dynamic 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