In the house just up the hill from Nanny Ogg's cottage Mrs. Skindle grabbed her husband's arm.
“The goat's still outside!”
“Are you mad? I ain't going out there! Not now!”
“You know what happened last time! It was paralysed all down one side for three days, man, and we couldn't get it down off the roof!”
Mr. Skindle poked his head out of the door. It had all gone quiet. Too quiet.
“She's probably pouring the water in,” he said.
“You've got a minute or two,” said his wife. “Go on, or we'll be drinking yoghurt for weeks.”
Mr. Skindle took down a halter from behind the door, and crept out to where his goat was tethered near the hedge. It too had learned to recognize the bathtime ritual, and was rigid with apprehension.
There was no point in trying to drag it. Eventually he picked it up bodily.
There was a distant but insistent sloshing noise, and the bonging sound of a floating pumice stone bouncing on the side of a tin bath.
Mr. Skindle started to run.
Then there was the distant tinkle of a banjo being tuned.
The world held its breath.
Then it came, like a tornado sweeping across a prairie.
“AAaaaaeeeeeee-”
Three flowerpots outside the door cracked, one after the other. Shrapnel whizzed past Mr. Skindle's ear.
“-wizzaaardsah staaafff has a knobontheend, knobontheend-”
He threw the goat through the doorway and leapt after it. His wife was waiting, and slammed the door shut behind him.
The whole family, including the goat, got under the table.
It wasn't that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.
There had been plenty of singers whose high notes could smash a glass, but Nanny's high C could clean it.
The Lancre Morris Men sat glumly on the turf, passing an earthenware jug between them. It had not been a good rehearsal.
“Don't work, does it?” said Thatcher. “'S'not funny, that I do know,” said Weaver. “Can't see the king killing himself laughing at us playing a bunch of mechanical artisans not being very good at doin' a play.”
“You're just no good at it,” said Jason. “We're sposed to be no good at it,” said Weaver. “Yeah, but you're no good at acting like someone who's ho good at acting,” said Tinker. “I don't know how, but you ain't. You can't expect all the fine lords and ladies-”
A breeze blew over the moor, tasting of ice at midsummer.
“-to laugh at us not being any good at being no good at acting.”
“I don't see what's funny about a bunch of rude artisans trying to do a play anyway,” said Weaver.
Jason shrugged.
“It says all the gentry-”
A tang on the wind, the sharp tin taste of snow . . .