Maskerade

was a clear track through the dust. Someone had used the stairs several times.
    She hesitated between up and down, and headed up. That was no great journey—after one more flight it ended at a trapdoor that wasn’t even bolted.
    She pushed at it, and then blinked in the unaccustomed light. Wind caught at her hair. A pigeon stared at her, and flew away as she poked her head into the fresh air.
    The door had opened out onto the Opera House’s roof, just one more item in a forest of sky-lights and air shafts.
    She went back inside and headed downward. And became aware, as she did so, of the voices…
    The old stairs hadn’t been totally forgotten. Someone had at least seen their usefulness as an air shaft. Voices filtered up. There were scales, distant music, snatches of conversation. As she went down she passed through layers of noise, like a very carefully made sundae of sound.

    Greebo sat on top of the kitchen cupboard and watched the performance with interest.
    “Use the ladle, why don’t you?” said a scene shifter.
    “It won’t reach! Walter!”
    “Yes Mrs. Clamp?”
    “Give me that broom!”
    “Yes Mrs. Clamp!”
    Greebo looked up at the high ceiling, to which was affixed a sort of thin, ten-pointed star.
    In the middle of it was a pair of very frightened eyes.
    “‘Plunge it into boiling water,’” said Mrs. Clamp, “that’s what it said in the cookbook. It never said ‘Watch out, it’ll grip the sides of the pot and spring straight up in the air—’”
    She flailed around with the broom handle. The squid shrank back.
    “And that pasta’s all gone wrong,” she muttered. “I’ve had it grilling for hours and it’s still hard as nails, the wretched stuff.”
    “Coo-ee, it’s only me,” said Nanny Ogg, poking her head around the door, and such was the all-embracing nature of her personality that even those who didn’t know who she was took this on trust. “Having a bit of trouble, are you?”
    She surveyed the scene, including the ceiling. There was a smell of burning pasta in the air.
    “Ah,” she said. “This’d be the special lunch for Senior Basilica, would it?”
    “It was meant to be,” said the cook, still making ineffectual swipes. “Blasted thing won’t come down, though.”
    Other pots were simmering on the long iron range. Nanny nodded toward them. “What’s everyone else having?” she said.
    “Mutton and clootie dumplings, with slumpie,” said the cook.
    “Ah. Good, honest food,” said Nanny, speaking of wall-to-wall suet oiled with lard.
    “And there’s supposed to be Jammy Devils for pudding and I’ve been so tied up with this wretched thing I haven’t even made a start!”
    Nanny carefully took the broom out of the cook’s hands. “Tell you what,” she said, “you make enough dumplings and slumpie for five people, and I’ll help by knocking up a quick pudding, how about that?”
    “Well, that’s a very handsome offer, Mrs.—”
    “Ogg.”
    “The jam’s in the jar by—”
    “Oh, I won’t bother about jam,” said Nanny. She looked at the spice rack, grinned, and then stepped behind a table for modesty—
    —twingtwangtwongtwang—
    —“Got any chocolate?” she said, producing a slim volume. “I’ve got a recipe right here that might be fun…”
    She licked her thumb and opened the book at page 53. Chocolate Delight with Special Secret Sauce.
    Yes, thought Nanny, that would be fun.
    If people wanted to go around teaching people lessons, other people should remember that those people knew a thing or two about people.

    Scraps of conversation floated out of the walls as Agnes wound her secret way down the forgotten stairs.
    It was…thrilling.
    No one was saying anything important. There were no convenient guilty secrets. There were just the sounds of people getting through the day. But they were secret sounds.
    It was wrong to listen, of course.
    Agnes had been brought up in the knowledge that a lot of things were wrong. It was wrong to listen at doors, to look people directly in the eye, to talk out of turn, to answer back, to put yourself forward…
    But behind the walls she could be the Perdita she’d always wanted to be. Perdita didn’t care about anything. Perdita got things done. Perdita could wear anything she wanted. Perdita X Nitt, mistress of the darkness, magdalen of cool, could listen in to other people’s lives. And never, ever have to have a wonderful personality.
    Agnes knew she should go back up to her room.