Maskerade

Ogg,” said Mrs. Plinge. She was polishing glasses in her tiny bar.
    “Certainly very packed,” said Nanny. She looked sidelong at the old woman. * “Every seat sold, I heard.”
    This didn’t achieve the expected reaction.
    “Shall I give you a hand cleaning out Box Eight?” she went on.
    “Oh, I cleaned it out last week,” said Mrs. Plinge. She held a glass up to the light.
    “Yes, but I heard her ladyship is very particular,” said Nanny. “Very picky about things.”
    “What ladyship?”
    “Mr. Bucket has sold Box Eight, see,” said Nanny.
    She heard a faint tinkle of glass. Ah .
    Mrs. Plinge appeared at the doorway of her nook. “But he can’t do that!”
    “It’s his Opera House,” said Nanny, watching Mrs. Plinge carefully. “I suppose he thinks he can.”
    “It’s the Ghost’s Box!”
    Operagoers were appearing along the corridor.
    “I shouldn’t think he’d mind just for one night,” said Nanny Ogg. “The show must go on, eh? Are you all right, Mrs. Plinge?”
    “I think I’d just better go and—” she began, stepping forward.
    “No, you have a good sit down and a rest,” said Nanny, pressing her back with gentle but irresistible force.
    “But I should go and—”
    “ And what , Mrs. Plinge?” said Nanny.
    The old woman went pale. Granny Weatherwax could be nasty, but then nastiness was always in the window: you were aware that it might turn up on the menu. Sharpness from Nanny Ogg, though, was like being bitten by a big friendly dog. It was all the worse for being unexpected.
    “I daresay you wanted to go and have a word with somebody, did you, Mrs. Plinge?” said Nanny softly. “Someone who might be a little shocked to find his Box full, perhaps? I reckon I could put a name to that someone, Mrs. Plinge. Now, if—”
    The old woman’s hand came up holding a bottle of champagne and then came down hard in an effort to launch the SS Gytha Ogg onto the seas of unconsciousness. The bottle bounced.
    Then Mrs. Plinge leapt past and scuttled away, her polished little black boots twinkling.
    Nanny Ogg caught the door frame and swayed a little while blue and purple fireworks went off behind her eyes. But there was dwarf in the Ogg ancestry, and that meant a skull you could go mining with.
    She stared muzzily at the bottle. “Year of the Insulted Goat,” she mumbled. “’S a good year.”
    Then consciousness gained the upper hand.
    She grinned as she galloped after the retreating figure. In Mrs. Plinge’s place she’d have done exactly the same thing, except a good deal harder.

    Agnes waited with the others for the curtain to go up. She was one of the crowd of fifty or so townspeople who would hear Enrico Basilica sing of his success as a master of disguise, it being a vital part of the entire process that, while the chorus would listen to expositions of the plot, and even sing along, they would suffer an instant lapse of memory afterward so that later unmaskings would come as a surprise.
    For some reason, without any word being spoken, as many people as possible seemed to have acquired very broad-brimmed hats. Those who hadn’t were taking every opportunity to glance upward.
    Beyond the curtain, Herr Trubelmacher launched the overture.
    Enrico, who had been chewing a chicken leg, carefully put the bone on a plate and nodded. The waiting stagehand dashed off.
    The opera had begun.

    Mrs. Plinge reached the bottom of the grand staircase and hung on to the banister, panting.
    The opera had started. There was no one around. And no sounds of pursuit, either.
    She straightened up, and tried to get her breath back.
    “Coo-ee, Mrs. Plinge!”
    Nanny Ogg, waving the champagne bottle like a club, was already traveling at speed when she hit the first turn in the banister, but she leaned like a professional and kept her balance as she went into the straight, and then tilted again for the next curve…
    …which left only the big gilt statue at the bottom. It is the fate of all banisters worth sliding down that there is something nasty waiting at the far end. But Nanny Ogg’s response was superb. She swung a leg over as she hurtled downward and pushed herself off, her nailed boots leaving grooves in the marble as she spun to a halt in front of the old woman.
    Mrs. Plinge was lifted off her feet and carried into the shadows behind another statue.
    “You don’t want to try and outrun me, Mrs. Plinge,” Nanny whispered, as she clamped a hand firmly over Mrs. Plinge’s mouth.