Snuff (Discworld 39)

“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, toward 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 would be proud of it. I’m sure you thought you were doing the right thing when you shook hands with the gardener, but you puzzled people. They don’t know what to make of you. Are you a man or a master? Are you a nob or one of them? Because, commander, from where they sit no man can be both. It would be against nature. And the countryside doesn’t like puzzles, either.”

“Big puzzled trousers!” said Young Sam and fell on the grass, overwhelmed with humor.

“I don’t know what to make of me either,” said Vimes, picking up his son and following Willikins down the slope. “But Sybil does. She’s got me marked down for balls, dances, dinners, and, oh yes, soirées,” he finished, in the tones of a man genetically programmed to distrust any word with an acute accent in it. “I mean, that sort of thing in the city I’ve come to terms with. If I reckon that it’s going to be too bloody dreadful I make certain I get called out in an emergency halfway through—at least I used to, before Sybil twigged on. It’s a terrible thing when a man’s employees take their orders from his wife, you know?”

“Yes, commander. She has given the kitchen staff orders that no bacon sandwiches are to be prepared without her express permission.”

Vimes winced. “You brought the little cookery kit, didn’t you?”

“Unfortunately, her ladyship knows about our little cookery kit, commander. She has forbidden the kitchen to give me bacon unless the order comes directly from her.”

“Honestly, she’s as bad as Vetinari! How does she find out all this stuff?”

“As a matter of fact, commander, I don’t think she does, at least as an actual fact. She just knows you. Perhaps you should think of it as amiable suspicion. We should be getting along, commander. I’m told there is chicken salad for lunch.”

“Do I like chicken salad?”

“Yes, commander, her ladyship tells me that you do.”

Vimes gave in. “Then I do.”

Back in Scoone Avenue, Vimes and Sybil generally took only one meal a day together, in the kitchen, which was always pleasantly snug by then. They sat facing one another at the table, which was long enough to carry Vimes’s huge collection of sauce bottles, mustard pots, pickles and, of course, chutneys, Vimes being of the popular persuasion that no jar of pickles is ever truly empty if you rattle the spoon around inside it long enough.

Things were different at the Hall. For one thing there was far too much food. Vimes had not been born yesterday, or even the day before, and refrained from commenting.

Willikins served Vimes and Lady Sybil. Strictly speaking it wasn’t his job while they were away from home, but strictly speaking most gentlemen’s gentlemen didn’t carry a set of brass knuckles in their well-cut jacket either.

“And what did you boys do this morning?” said Sybil cheerfully, as the plates were emptied.

“We saw the stinky bone man!” said Young Sam. “He was like all beard, but stinky! And we found the smelly apple tree which is like poo!”

Lady Sybil’s placid expression did not change. “And then you came down the roly-poly hill, didn’t you? And what about the ha-ha, the ho-ho and the he-he?”

“Yes, but there’s all cow poo! I treaded in it!” Young Sam waited for an adult response, and his mother said, “Well, you’ve got your new country boots, haven’t you? Treading in cow poo is what they’re for.”

Sam Vimes watched his son’s face glow with impossible pleasure as his mother went on. “Your grandfather always told me that if I saw a big pile of muck in a field I should kick it around a bit so as to spread it evenly, because that way all the grass will grow properly.” She smiled at Vimes’s expression and said, “Well, it’s true, dear. A lot of farming is about manure.”