“Yes. It's going to be a long day.”
“Very nearly the longest day. Haha.”
“Yes.”
“I expect they've put warming pans in our beds.”
“Has Shawn got the hang of it now?”
“I hope so. I can't afford any more mattresses.”
It was a great hall. Shadows piled up in the corners, clustered at either end.
“I suppose,” said Magrat, very slowly, as they stared at the fire, “they haven't really had many books here in Lancre. Up until now.”
“Literacy is a great thing.”
“They got along without them, I suppose.”
“Yes, but not properly. Their husbandry is really very primitive.”
Magrat looked at the fire. Their wifery wasn't up to much either, she thought.
“So we'd better be off to bed, then, do you think?”
“I suppose so.”
Verence took down two silver candlesticks, and lit the candles with a taper. He handed one to Magrat.
“Goodnight, then.”
“Goodnight.”
They kissed, and turned away, and headed for their own rooms.
The sheets on Magrat's bed were just beginning to turn brown. She pulled out the warming pan and dropped it out of the window.
She glared at the garderobe.
Magrat was probably the only person in Lancre who worried about things being biodegradable. Everyone else just hoped things would last and knew that damn near everything went rotten if you left it long enough.
At home - correction, at the cottage where she used to live - there had been a privy at the bottom of the garden.
She'd approved of it. With a regular bucket of ashes and a copy of last year's Almanack on a nail and a bunch-of-grapes cut out on the door it functioned quite effectively. About once every few months she'd have to dig a big hole and get someone to help her move the shed itself.
The garderobe was this: a sort of small roofed-in room inside the wall, with a wooden seat positioned over a large square hole that went down all the way to the foot of the castle wall far below, where there was an opening from which biodegradability took place once a week by means of an organodynamic process known as Shawn Ogg and his wheelbarrow. That much Magrat understood. It kind of fitted in with the whole idea of royalty and commonality. What shocked her were the hooks.
They were for storing clothes in the garderobe. Millie had explained that the more expensive furs and things were hung there. Moths were kept away by the draught from the hole and . . . the smell.[23]
Magrat had put her foot down about that, at least.
Now she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.
Of course she wanted to marry Verence, even with his weak chin and slightly runny eyes. In the pit of the night Magrat knew that she was in no position to be choosy, and getting a king in the circumstances was a stroke of luck.
It was just that she had preferred him when he'd been a Fool. There's something about a man who tinkles gently as he moves.
It was just that she could see a future of bad tapestry and sitting looking wistfully out of the window.