Unseen Academicals

late in the day, I must admit, but you don’t feel any hunger for blood or brains, do you?’
    ‘Not at all. Just pies. I like pies. I am very ashamed about the pies. It will not happen again, Miss Glenda. I fear my body was acting on its own. It needed instant nourishment.’
    ‘Trev says you used to be chained to an anvil?’
    ‘Yes. That was because I was worthless. Then I was taken to see Ladyship and she told me: You are worthless but, I think, not unworthy, and I will give you worth.’
    ‘But you must have had parents!’
    ‘I do not know. There are many things I don’t know. There is a door.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘A door in my head. Some things are behind the door and I don’t know them. But that is all right, Ladyship says.’
    Glenda felt like giving up. Nutt answered questions, yes, but really all you ended up with was more questions. But she persevered. It was like stabbing away at a tin can, hoping to find a way in. ‘Ladyship is a real lady, is she? Castles and servants and whatnot?’
    ‘Oh, yes. Even a whatnot. She is my friend. And she is mature like cheese and wine, because she has lived for a long time and is not old.’
    ‘But she sent you here, yes? Did she teach you…whatever it was you used on Trev?’
    Beside Glenda, Trev stirred.
    ‘No,’ said Nutt. ‘I read the works of the masters in the library all by myself. But she did tell me that people, too, were a kind of living book, and I would have to learn to read them.’
    ‘Well, you read Trev well enough. Be told, though: don’t try that stuff on me or you’ll never see another pie!’
    ‘Yes, Miss Glenda. Sorry, Miss Glenda.’
    She sighed. What is it about me? The moment they look downcast I feel sorry for them! She looked up. He was watching her.
    ‘Stop that!’
    ‘Sorry, Miss Glenda.’
    ‘But you got to see the football, at least. Did you enjoy it?’
    Nutt’s face lit up. ‘Yes. It was wonderful. The noise, the crowds, the chanting, oh the chanting! It becomes a second blood! The unison! To not be alone! To be not just one but one and all, of one mind and purpose!…excuse me.’ He had seen her face.
    ‘So you quite liked it, then,’ said Glenda. The intensity of Nutt’s outburst had been like opening an oven door. It was a mercy her hair hadn’t frizzled.
    ‘Oh yes! The ambience was wonderful!’
    ‘I didn’t try those,’ Glenda hazarded, ‘but the pease pudding is usually good.’
    The scrape of crockery and the tinkling of a teaspoon heralded the arrival of Juliet, or rather of the cup of tea that she was holding in front of her as if it were a grail, so that she drifted along behind it like a comet’s tail. Glenda was impressed. The tea was in the cup instead of in the saucer and it was the acceptable brown colour that is usually characteristic of tea and was usually the only tea-like characteristic of tea made by Juliet.
    Trev sat up, and Glenda wondered how long he might have been paying attention. All right, he might be good in an emergency, and at least he washed sometimes and owned a toothbrush, but Juliet was special, wasn’t she? All she needed was a prince. Technically that meant Lord Vetinari, but he was far too old. Besides, no one was sure which side of the bed he got out of, or even if he went to bed at all. But one day a prince would come, even if Glenda had to drag him on a chain.
    She turned her head. Nutt was watching her intently again. Well, her book was locked down tightly. No one was going to riffle through her pages. And tomorrow she would find out what the wizards were up to. That was easy. She’d be invisible.

    In the stillness of the night, Nutt sat in his special place, which was yet another room, very close to the vats. Candles burned as he sat at a rescued table, staring at a piece of paper and absent-mindedly cleaning out his ear with the point of his pencil.
    Nutt was technically an expert on love poetry throughout the ages and had discussed it at length with Miss Healstether, the castle librarian. He had also tried to discuss it with Ladyship, but she had laughed and said it was frivolity, although quite helpful as a tutorial on the use of vocabulary, scansion, rhythm and affect as a means to an end, to wit getting a young lady to take all her clothes off. At that particular point, Nutt had not really understood what she meant. It sounded like some sort of conjuring trick.
    He tapped the pencil on the page. The castle library had been full of poetry and he’d read it