“Couldn't say, Mum.”
“Just a few things I got to do.”
She hadn't gone much further before a voice behind her said, “Ello, oh moon of my delight.”
“You do sneak up on people, Casanunda.”
“I've arranged for us to have dinner at the Goat and Bush,” said the dwarf Count.
“Ooo, that's a horrible expensive place,” said Nanny Ogg. “Never eaten there.”
“They've got some special provisions in, what with the wedding and all the gentry here,” said Casanunda. “I've made special arrangements.”
These had been quite difficult.
Food as an aphrodisiac was not a concept that had ever caught on in Lancre, apart from Nanny Ogg's famous Carrot and Oyster Pie.[32] As far as the cook at the Goat and Bush was concerned, food and sex were only linked in certain humorous gestures involving things like cucumbers. He'd never heard of chocolate, banana skins, avocado and ginger, marshmallow and the thousand other foods people had occasionally employed to drive an A-to-B freeway through the rambling pathways of romance. Casanunda had spent a busy ten minutes sketching out a detailed menu, and quite a lot of money had changed hands.
He'd arranged a careful romantic candlelit supper. Casanunda had always believed in the art of seduction.
Many tall women accessible by stepladder across the continent had reflected how odd it was that the dwarfs, a race to whom the aforesaid art of seduction consisted in the main part of tactfully finding out what sex, underneath all that leather and chain-mail, another dwarf was, had generated someone like Casanunda.
It was as if Eskimos had produced a natural expert in the care and attention of rare tropical plants. The great pent up waters of dwarfish sexuality had found a leak at the bottom of the dam-small, but with enough power to drive a dynamo.
Everything that his fellow dwarfs did very occasionally as nature demanded he did all the time, sometimes in the back of a sedan chair and once upside down in a tree - but, and this is important, with care and attention to detail that was typically dwarfish. Dwarfs would spend months working on an exquisite piece of jewellery, and for broadly similar reasons Casanunda was a popular visitor to many courts and palaces, for some strange reason generally while the local lord was away. He also had a dwarfish ability with locks, always a useful talent for those awkward moments sur la boudoir.
And Nanny Ogg was an attractive lady, which is not the same as being beautiful. She fascinated Casanunda. She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley.
* * *
“I wish I had my crossbow,” muttered Ridcully. “With that head on my wall I'd always have a place to hang my hat.”
The unicorn tossed its head and pawed the ground. Steam rose from its flanks.
“I ain't sure that would work,” said Granny. “You sure you've got no whoosh left in them fingers of yours?”
“I could create an illusion,” said the wizard. “That's not hard.”
“It wouldn't work. The unicorn is an elvish creature. Magic don't work on 'em. They see through illusions. They ought to, they're good enough at 'em. How about the bank? Reckon you could scramble up it?”
They both glanced at the banks. They were red clay, slippery as priests.
“Let's walk backward,” said Granny. “Slowly.”
“How about its mind? Can you get in?”
“There's someone in there already. The poor thing's her pet. It obeys only her.”
The unicorn walked after them, trying to watch both of them at the same time.
“What shall we do when we come to the bridge?”
“You can still swim, can't you?”
“The river's a long way down.”
“But there's a deep pool there. Don't you remember? You dived in there once. One moonlit night. . .”
“I was young and foolish then.”