Maskerade

“Yes. Recipes and that. Yes.”
    Granny glared at her. “ Just recipes?”
    “Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. And some…cookery anecdotes, yes.”
    Granny went on glaring.
    Nanny gave in.
    “Er…look under Famous Carrot and Oyster Pie,” she said. “Page 25.”
    Granny turned the pages. Her lips moved silently. Then: “I see . Anything else?”
    “Er…Cinnamon and Marshmallow Fingers…page 17…”
    Granny looked it up.
    “And?”
    “Er…Celery Astonishment…page 10.”
    Granny looked that up, too.
    “Can’t say it astonished me ,” she said. “And…?”
    “Er…well, more or less all of Humorous Puddings and Cake Decoration. That’s all of Chapter Six. I done illustrations for that.”
    Granny turned to Chapter Six. She had to turn the book around a couple of times.
    “What one you looking at?” said Nanny Ogg, because an author is always keen to get feedback.
    “Strawberry Wobbler,” said Granny.
    “Ah. That one always gets a laugh.”
    It did not appear to be obtaining one from Granny. She carefully closed the book.
    “Gytha,” she said, “this is me askin’ you this. Is there any page in this book, is there any single recipe, which does not in some way relate to…goings-on?”
    Nanny Ogg, her face red as her apples, seemed to give this some lengthy consideration.
    “Porridge,” she said, eventually.
    “Really?”
    “Yes. Er. No, I tell a lie, it’s got my special honey mixture in it.”
    Granny turned a page.
    “What about this one? Maids of Honor?”
    “ Weeelll , they starts out as Maids of Honor,” said Nanny, fidgeting with her feet, “but they ends up Tarts.”
    Granny looked at the front cover again. The Joye of Snacks .
    “An’ you actually set out to—”
    “It just sort of turned out that way, really.”
    Granny Weatherwax was not a jouster in the lists of love but, as an intelligent onlooker, she knew how the game was played. No wonder the book had sold like hot cakes. Half the recipes told you how to make them. It was surprising the pages hadn’t singed.
    And it was by “A Lancre Witch.” The world was, Granny Weatherwax modestly admitted, well aware of who the witch of Lancre was; viz , it was her.
    “Gytha Ogg,” she said.
    “Yes, Esme?”
    “Gytha Ogg, you look me in the eye.”
    “Sorry, Esme.”
    “‘A Lancre Witch,’ it says here.”
    “I never thought, Esme.”
    “So you’ll go and see Mr. Goatberger and have this stopped, right? I don’t want people lookin’ at me and thinkin’ about the Bananana Soup Surprise. I don’t even believe the Bananana Soup Surprise. And I ain’t relishin’ going down the street and hearin’ people makin’ cracks about bananas.”
    “Yes, Esme.”
    “And I’ll come with you to make sure you do.”
    “Yes, Esme.”
    “And we’ll talk to the man about your money.”
    “Yes, Esme.”
    “And we might just drop in on young Agnes to make sure she’s all right.”
    “Yes, Esme.”
    “But we’ll do it diplomatic like. We don’t want people thinkin’ we’re pokin’ our noses in.”
    “Yes, Esme.”
    “No one could say I interfere where I’m not wanted. You won’t find anyone callin’ me a busybody.”
    “Yes, Esme.”
    “That was, ‘Yes, Esme, you won’t find anyone callin’ you a busybody,’ was it?”
    “Oh, yes, Esme.”
    “You sure about that?”
    “Yes, Esme.”
    “Good.”
    Granny looked out at the dull gray sky and the dying leaves and felt, amazingly enough, her sap rising. A day ago the future had looked aching and desolate, and now it looked full of surprises and terror and bad things happening to people…
    If she had anything to do with it, anyway.
    In the scullery, Nanny Ogg grinned to herself.

    Agnes had known a little bit about the theater. A traveling company came to Lancre sometimes. Their stage was about twice the size of a door, and “backstage” consisted of a bit of sacking behind which was usually a man trying to change trousers and wigs at the same time and another man, dressed as a king, having a surreptitious smoke.
    The Opera House was almost as big as the Patrician’s palace, and far more palatial. It covered three acres. There was stabling for twenty horses and two elephants in the cellar; Agnes spent some time there, because the elephants were reassuringly larger than her.
    There were rooms behind the stage so big that entire sets were stored there. There was a whole ballet school somewhere in the building. Some of the girls were on stage now, ugly in woolly