Lords and Ladies

Magrat had never been any good at acting. She’d always felt she wasn’t very good at being Magrat, if it came to that.
    The bustle of the pre-nuptial activities rose up from the town. There’d be folkdancing, of course—there seemed to be no way of preventing it—and probably folksinging would be perpetrated. And there’d be dancing bears and comic jugglers and the greasy pole competition, which for some reason Nanny Ogg always won. And bowling-with-a-pig. And the bran tub, which Nanny Ogg usually ran; it was a brave man who plunged his hand into a bran tub stocked by a witch with a broad sense of humor. Magrat had always liked the fairs. Up until now.
    Well, there were still some things she could do.
    She dressed herself in her commoner’s clothes for the last time, and let herself out and down the back stairs to the widdershins tower and the room where Diamanda lay.
    Magrat had instructed Shawn to keep a good fire going in the grate, and Diamanda was still sleeping, peacefully, the unwakeable sleep.
    Magrat couldn’t help noticing that Diamanda was strikingly good-looking and, from what she’d heard, quite brave enough to stand up to Granny Weatherwax. She could hardly wait to get her better so that she could envy her properly.
    The wound seemed to be healing up nicely, but there seemed to be—
    Magrat strode to the bellpull in the corner and hauled on it.
    After a minute or two Shawn Ogg arrived, panting. There was gold paint on his hands.
    “What,” said Magrat, “are all these things?”
    “Um. Don’t like to say, ma’am…”
    “One happens to be…very nearly…the queen,” said Magrat.
    “Yes, but the king said…well, Granny said—”
    “Granny Weatherwax does not happen to rule the kingdom,” said Magrat. She hated herself when she spoke like this, but it seemed to work. “And anyway she’s not here. One is here, however, and if you don’t tell one what’s going on I’ll see to it that you do all the dirty jobs around the palace.”
    “But I do all the dirty jobs anyway,” said Shawn.
    “I shall see to it that there are dirtier ones.”
    Magrat picked up one of the bundles. It was made up of strips of sheet wrapped around what turned out to be an iron bar.
    “They’re all around her,” she said. “Why?”
    Shawn looked at his feet. There was gold paint on his boots, too.
    “Well, our mum said…”
    “Yes?”
    “Our mum said I was to see to it that there was iron round her. So me and Millie got some bars from down the smithy and wrapped ’em up like this and Millie packed ’em round her.”
    “Why?”
    “To keep away the…the Lords and Ladies, ma’am.”
    “What? That’s just old superstition! Anyway, everyone knows elves were good, whatever Granny Weatherwax says.”
    Behind her, Shawn flinched. Magrat pulled the wrapped iron lumps out of the bed and tossed them into the corner.
    “No old wives’ tales here, thank you very much. Is there anything else people haven’t been telling me, by any chance?”
    Shawn shook his head, guiltily aware of the thing in the dungeon.
    “Huh! Well, go away. Verence wants the kingdom to be modern and efficient, and that means no horseshoes and stuff around the place. Go on, go away.”
    “Yes, Miss Queen.”
    At least I can do something positive around here, Magrat told herself.
    Yes. Be sensible. Go and see him. Talk. Magrat clung to the idea that practically anything could be sorted out if only people talked to one another.
    “Shawn?”
    He paused at the door.
    “Yes, ma’am?”
    “Has the king gone down to the Great Hall yet?”
    “I think he’s still dressing, Miss Queen. He hasn’t rung for me to do the trumpet, I know that.”
    In fact, Verence, who didn’t like going everywhere preceded by Shawn’s idea of a fanfare, had already gone downstairs incognito. But Magrat slipped along to his room, and knocked on the door.
    Why be bashful? It’d be her room as well from tomorrow, wouldn’t it? She tried the handle. It turned. Without quite willing it, Magrat went in.
    Rooms in the castle could hardly be said to belong to anyone in any case. They’d had too many occupants over the centuries. The very atmosphere was the equivalent of those walls scattered with outbreaks of drawing-pin holes where last term’s occupants hung the posters of rock groups long disbanded. You couldn’t stamp your personality on that stone. It stamped back harder.
    For Magrat, stepping into a man’s bedroom was like an explorer