Snuff

People can be so cruel sometimes, sir. There was also his brother, “Rubber Ramkin”, who devised not only rubber boots but also rubberized fabric, even before the dwarfs did. Very interested indeed in rubber, so I heard, but it takes all sorts to make a world and it would be a funny old place if we were all the same, and especially if we were all like him. Dry feet and dry shoulders, sir, what every farmworker prays for! I did a spell cutting cabbages one winter, sir, weather as cold as charity and rain coming down so fast it had to queue up to hit the ground. I blessed his name then, so I did, even if it was true what they said about the young ladies, who I heard actually enjoyed the experience …’
    ‘This is all very well,’ said Vimes, ‘but it doesn’t make up for all the stupid, arrogant—’
    This time it was Willikins who interrupted his master. ‘And then there was the flying machine, of course. Her ladyship’s late brother put a lot of work into the project, but it never got off the ground. Flying without a broomstick or a magic spell was his goal, but regrettably he fell victim to the outbreak of crisms, poor lad. There’s a model of it in the nursery, as a matter of fact. It runs on rubber bands.’
    ‘I expect there was plenty of material around the place, unless Rubber Ramkin tidied up after himself,’ said Vimes.
    The tour continued, across meadows of what Vimes decided to call cows and around fields of standing corn. They navigated their way around a ha-ha, kept their distance from the ho-ho and completely ignored the he-he, then climbed a gentle path up a hill on which was planted a grove of beech trees and from which you could see practically everywhere, and certainly to the end of the universe, but that probably involved looking straight up with no beech trees in the way. It was even possible to make out the tall cloud of smoke and fumes that rose from the city of Ankh-Morpork.
    ‘This is Hangman’s Hill,’ said Willikins, as Vimes got his breath back. ‘And you might not want to go any further,’ he said as they neared the summit, ‘unless, that is, you want to explain to your young lad what a gibbet is.’
    Vimes looked questioningly at his servant. ‘Really?’
    ‘Well, as I say, this is Hangman’s Hill. Why do you think they named it that, sir? “Black Jack” Ramkin was regrettably mistaken when he made an enormous drunken wager with one of his equally drunk drinking pals that he could see the smoke of the city from his estate. He was told by a surveyor, who had tested the hypothesis, that the hill was thirty feet too short. Pausing only to attempt to bribe the surveyor and when unsuccessful to subsequently horsewhip the same, he rallied all the working men from this estate and all the others round here and set them to raise the hill by the aforesaid thirty feet, a most ambitious project. It cost a fortune, of course, but every family in the district probably got warm winter clothes and new boots out of it. It made him very popular, and of course he won his bet.’
    Vimes sighed. ‘Somehow I think I know the answer to this, but I’m going to ask anyway: how much was the bet?’
    ‘Two gallons of brandy,’ said Willikins triumphantly, ‘which he drank in one go while standing on this very spot, to the cheers of the assembled workforce, and then, according to legend, rolled all the way down to the bottom, to more cheers.’
    ‘Even when I was a boozer I don’t think I could have taken two gallons of brandy,’ said Vimes. ‘That’s twelve bottles!’
    ‘Well, towards the end I expect a lot of it went down his trousers, one way or the other. There were plenty like him, even so …’
    ‘All down his trousers,’ Young Sam piped up, and dissolved into that curious hoarse laughter of a six-year-old who thinks he has heard something naughty. And by the sound of it the workmen who had cheered the old drunk had thought the same way. Cheering a man drinking a year’s wages in one go? What was the point?
    Willikins must have read his thoughts. ‘The country isn’t as subtle as the city, commander. They like big and straightforward things here, and Black Jack was as big and as straight as you could hope for. That’s why they liked him, because they knew where they stood, even if he was about to fall down. I bet they boasted about him all over the Shires. I can just imagine it. Our drunken old lord can outdrink your drunken old lord any day of the week , and they